bouche-trou
\buʃ.tʁu\
The verdict
“bouche-trou” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Personne qui ne sert qu’à faire nombre, à laquelle on n’a recours qu’au besoin, pour remplir, tant bien que mal, une place vide, un emploi vacant.
Corpus desk
Index FR-bouche-trou · bouche-trou · French
bouche-trou · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-5 5 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 | bouche-trou |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \buʃ.tʁu\ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « bouche-trou » en français
Rare enough to double-check
bouche-trou is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \buʃ.tʁu\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for bouche-trou in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is bouche-trou, spelled B-O-U-C-H-E---T-R-O-U.
Definition
- 1Personne qui ne sert qu’à faire nombre, à laquelle on n’a recours qu’au besoin, pour remplir, tant bien que mal, une place vide, un emploi vacant.
- 2Élève chargé de remplacer un candidat empêché de participer aux épreuves du concours général.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how bouche-trou appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Le vide du cœur ne s’accommode point d’un bouche-trou.
Complétant, en 1962, son ouvrage Où va le travail humain ? , écrit en 1950, Georges Friedman considérait déjà que le travailleur, après avoir été le « bouche-trou de la mécanisation » , deviendra « le bouche-trou de l’automatisation ».
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.