cheval de bois

/\ʃə.val də bwa\/ noun

Letters

14 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

cheval de bois is aFrenchnoun. It means: Figure en bois pour voltiger. Pronounced \ʃə.val də bwa\.

Key facts for cheval de bois
PropertyValue
Headwordcheval de bois
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\ʃə.val də bwa\
Letters14
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

cheval de bois 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 cheval de bois is 14 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ʃə.val də bwa\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for cheval de bois 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 cheval de bois, spelled C-H-E-V-A-L- -D-E- -B-O-I-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Figure en bois pour voltiger.
  2. 2
    Sculpture en bois de taille réduite représentant un cheval, destinée à être montée par des enfants dans un manège forain.
  3. 3
    Jouet d'enfant.
  4. 4
    Tréteau en arête pour le supplice.
  5. 5
    Tête-à-queue.
  6. 6
    Sorte d'échelle utilisée par les écorceurs pour ôter les écorces de chênes sur pied.

Synonyms

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "cheval de bois"?
"cheval de bois" is spelled C-H-E-V-A-L- -D-E- -B-O-I-S. The IPA pronunciation is \ʃə.val də bwa\.
What does "cheval de bois" mean?
As a noun, "cheval de bois" means: Figure en bois pour voltiger.
How do you pronounce "cheval de bois"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "cheval de bois" is \ʃə.val də bwa\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "cheval de bois" come from?
"cheval de bois" 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 C in our French index:

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