bavoir
\ba.vwaʁ\
The verdict
“bavoir” is uncommon French (frequency #85,505 among 4,251 “B” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #85,505
- frequency rank, French
- 4,251
- “B” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Petite pièce de tissu qu’on attache sous le menton des jeunes enfants pour recevoir la bave, la salive qui coule souvent de leur bouche.
Corpus desk
Index FR-bavoir · bavoir · French
bavoir · rank #85,505 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #85,505
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,251
- PHOTO-FINISH basaltes
Nearest frequency peer: basaltes (-1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Rangs de longue queue près de « bavoir »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- Barbarossa
Barbarossa
14,502 corpus weight
- barbin
barbin
14,501 corpus weight
- Barguil
Barguil
14,500 corpus weight
- basaltes
basaltes
14,497 corpus weight
- bavoir
bavoir
14,496 corpus weight
- Bayet
Bayet
14,495 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « bavoir » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bavoir |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ba.vwaʁ\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #85,505 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « bavoir » en français
Rare enough to double-check
bavoir is uncommon French at frequency #85,505 among 4,251 “B” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ba.vwaʁ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Petite pièce de tissu qu’on attache sous le menton des jeunes enfants pour recevoir la bave, la salive qui coule souvent de leur bouche.".
bavoir doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is bavoir, spelled B-A-V-O-I-R.
Definition
- 1Petite pièce de tissu qu’on attache sous le menton des jeunes enfants pour recevoir la bave, la salive qui coule souvent de leur bouche.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how bavoir appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Vaut-il mieux, pour cadeau de baptême du petit Landry, offrir un bavoir ou une timbale ?
[…] et l'enfant raconta que, lorsque sa maman l'avait chargée de laver les petits vêtements qui habillaient Blanche-Neige le jour où on l'avait trouvée, elle avait remarqué que cette petite broche était épinglée au bavoir du bébé
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "bavoir", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).