boursouflé

\buʁ.su.fle\

/\buʁ.su.fle\/ adj

The verdict

“boursouflé” is uncommon French (frequency #95,619 among 4,251 “B” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#95,619
frequency rank, French
4,251
“B” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Enflé, gonflé à l'extrême.

Corpus desk

Index FR-boursoufle · boursouflé · French

boursouflé · rank #95,619 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #95,619
  • LEN-MEGA 10 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 4,251
  • PHOTO-FINISH Boullier

Nearest frequency peer: Boullier (-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 « boursouflé »

Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court

corpus weight

What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « boursouflé » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for boursouflé
PropertyValue
Headwordboursouflé
LanguageFrench
Part of speechAdjective
IPA\buʁ.su.fle\
Letters10
Frequency rank#95,619
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Longue queue: rang de « boursouflé » en français

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).boursouflétombe dans cette queue de rareté:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

L'axe est logarithmique: chaque tic marque environ dix fois moins de fréquence. Voisins rares de la même bande: « Boullier » (#95,618), « bousculait » (#95,620), « bove » (#95,621). Parmi 4,251 lemmes en « B », « boursouflé » est au #95,619. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

boursouflé is uncommon French at frequency #95,619 among 4,251 “B” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed \buʁ.su.fle\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for boursouflé, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, 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 boursouflé, spelled B-O-U-R-S-O-U-F-L-É.

Definition

  1. 1
    Enflé, gonflé à l'extrême.
  2. 2
    Se dit figurément d’une manière pompeuse et vide d’écrire, de parler.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how boursouflé appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Le cri auquel il était sourd le suivit jusqu’à l’instant où, sur sa jambe pourrie, la peau boursouflée céda, éclata, laissa le pus jaillir et ruisseler.
  2. Un style boursouflé.

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

How do you spell "boursouflé"?
"boursouflé" is spelled B-O-U-R-S-O-U-F-L-É. The IPA pronunciation is \buʁ.su.fle\.
What does "boursouflé" mean?
As an adjective, "boursouflé" means: Enflé, gonflé à l'extrême.
How do you pronounce "boursouflé"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "boursouflé" is \buʁ.su.fle\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "boursouflé" come from?
"boursouflé" is a French word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
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.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "boursouflé", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 10 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list