bailler la pénitence
\ba.je la pe.ni.tɑ̃s\
The verdict
“bailler la pénitence” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as a verb - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 20
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) — Infliger une punition à quelqu’un.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bailler la pénitence |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \ba.je la pe.ni.tɑ̃s\ |
| Letters | 20 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “bailler la pénitence” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for bailler la pénitence is 20 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ba.je la pe.ni.tɑ̃s\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Infliger une punition à quelqu’un.".
No misspelling variants are generated for bailler la pénitence in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is bailler la pénitence, spelled B-A-I-L-L-E-R- -L-A- -P-É-N-I-T-E-N-C-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Infliger une punition à quelqu’un.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “bailler la pénitence, French word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/fr/mot/bailler-la-penitence
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “bailler la pénitence”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is B-A-I-L-L-E-R- -L-A- -P-É-N-I-T-E-N-C-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ba.je la pe.ni.tɑ̃s\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our French index: