bête comme chou
\bɛt kɔm ʃu\
The verdict
“bête comme chou” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 15
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - D’une extrême simplicité.
Corpus desk
Index FR-bete-comme-chou · bête comme chou · French
bête comme chou · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 15 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bête comme chou |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \bɛt kɔm ʃu\ |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « bête comme chou » en français
Rare enough to double-check
bête comme chou is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective, transcribed \bɛt kɔm ʃu\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "D’une extrême simplicité.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for bête comme chou in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 bête comme chou, spelled B-Ê-T-E- -C-O-M-M-E- -C-H-O-U.
Definition
- 1D’une extrême simplicité.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how bête comme chou appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
— Ça ne m’intéresse pas, c’est tout. — Tu te dégonfles. — Non, dit Maillat, je ne crois pas que ce soit ça non plus. Et tiens, ton idée de se mettre en civil, je la retiens. C’est bête comme chou, mais je n’y avais pas pensé.
Vous allez voir comme c’est bête. Bête comme chou !
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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.