bouc émissaire

/\bu.k‿e.mi.sɛʁ\/ noun

Letters

14 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

bouc émissaire is aFrenchnoun. It means: Bouc que l’on chassait dans le désert, après l’avoir chargé des malédictions que l’on voulait détourner du peuple. Pronounced \bu.k‿e.mi.sɛʁ\.

Key facts for bouc émissaire
PropertyValue
Headwordbouc émissaire
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\bu.k‿e.mi.sɛʁ\
Letters14
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

bouc émissaire is not present in the top-100,000 ranked French corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for bouc émissaire is 14 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \bu.k‿e.mi.sɛʁ\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for bouc émissaire in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable French patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.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 bouc émissaire, spelled B-O-U-C- -É-M-I-S-S-A-I-R-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Bouc que l’on chassait dans le désert, après l’avoir chargé des malédictions que l’on voulait détourner du peuple.
  2. 2
    Personne sur laquelle on fait retomber les torts des autres, victime expiatoire.

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "bouc émissaire"?
"bouc émissaire" is spelled B-O-U-C- -É-M-I-S-S-A-I-R-E. The IPA pronunciation is \bu.k‿e.mi.sɛʁ\.
What does "bouc émissaire" mean?
As a noun, "bouc émissaire" means: Bouc que l’on chassait dans le désert, après l’avoir chargé des malédictions que l’on voulait détourner du peuple.
How do you pronounce "bouc émissaire"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "bouc émissaire" is \bu.k‿e.mi.sɛʁ\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "bouc émissaire" come from?
"bouc émissaire" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter B in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.