brûler les ponts
\bʁy.le le pɔ̃\
The verdict
“brûler les ponts” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 16
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - S’engager dans une affaire, dans une entreprise, de manière à s’ôter tout moyen d’y renoncer ou de s’en désister.
Corpus desk
Index FR-bruler-les-ponts · brûler les ponts · French
brûler les ponts · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 16 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | brûler les ponts |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \bʁy.le le pɔ̃\ |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « brûler les ponts » en français
Rare enough to double-check
brûler les ponts is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \bʁy.le le pɔ̃\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "S’engager dans une affaire, dans une entreprise, de manière à s’ôter tout moyen d’y renoncer ou de s’en désister.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for brûler les ponts in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, 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. The correct French form is brûler les ponts, spelled B-R-Û-L-E-R- -L-E-S- -P-O-N-T-S.
Definition
- 1S’engager dans une affaire, dans une entreprise, de manière à s’ôter tout moyen d’y renoncer ou de s’en désister.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how brûler les ponts appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Ne craignez pas que jamais je recule ; j’ai brûlé tous les ponts derrière moi : il faut que je marche en avant ; la puissance du Cardinal tombera ou ce sera ma tête.
Synonyms
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.