clef de voûte
\kle də vut\
The verdict
“clef de voûte” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Claveau situé au milieu d'une voûte et servant à maintenir les autres pierres.
Corpus desk
Index FR-clef-de-voute · clef de voûte · French
clef de voûte · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "C" 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 | clef de voûte |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \kle də vut\ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « clef de voûte » en français
Rare enough to double-check
clef de voûte is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \kle də vut\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for clef de voûte, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is clef de voûte, spelled C-L-E-F- -D-E- -V-O-Û-T-E.
Definition
- 1Claveau situé au milieu d'une voûte et servant à maintenir les autres pierres.
- 2Point central, partie principale d’une affaire, dont tous les autres aspects dépendent.
- 3Personne sur laquelle repose une affaire, sa réussite ou son échec.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how clef de voûte appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
A la clef de voûte du porche pendait une lanterne de cuivre, ronde et grillée comme une fenêtre de prison.
Une qualité sculpturale analogue se retrouve à Saint-Père-sous-Vézelay, par exemple dans une clef de voûte ornée d'une Vierge à l'Enfant.
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.