bébête
\be.bɛt\
The verdict
“bébête” is uncommon French (frequency #79,128 among 4,251 “B” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #79,128
- frequency rank, French
- 4,251
- “B” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Niais, infantile.
Corpus desk
Index FR-bebete · bébête · French
bébête · rank #79,128 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #79,128
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,251
- PHOTO-FINISH bécanes
Nearest frequency peer: bécanes (+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 « bébête »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- bulgari
bulgari
20,878 corpus weight
- Burkhardt
Burkhardt
20,876 corpus weight
- butters
butters
20,875 corpus weight
- bébête
bébête
20,873 corpus weight
- bécanes
bécanes
20,872 corpus weight
- bétonnage
bétonnage
20,870 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « bébête » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bébête |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \be.bɛt\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #79,128 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « bébête » en français
Rare enough to double-check
bébête is uncommon French at frequency #79,128 among 4,251 “B” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed \be.bɛt\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Niais, infantile.".
No misspelling variants are generated for bébête in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct French form is bébête, spelled B-É-B-Ê-T-E.
Definition
- 1Niais, infantile.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how bébête appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Chaque détail révélait, ici, l’amour du luxe cher et grossier, là, une tendance regrettable à la romance, à l’attendrissement bébête.
C’est ainsi que je l’aime, que je la voudrais toujours, à moitié bébête, à moitié perverse, toute torturée d’impureté sous son attitude chaste…
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 "bébête", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).