coup de pouce
The verdict
“coup de pouce” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as a noun — the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 13
- letters
Dominant Wiktionary sense: Pression du pouce sur un objet.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | coup de pouce |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ku də pus\ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “coup de pouce” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for coup de pouce is 13 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ku də pus\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for coup de pouce in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. 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 coup de pouce, spelled C-O-U-P- -D-E- -P-O-U-C-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Pression du pouce sur un objet.
- 2Déformation apportée à quelque chose, comme le sculpteur déforme avec son pouce la matière qu’il façonne.
- 3Aide d’appoint apportée à quelqu’un pour accomplir une tâche, pour atteindre un objectif, pour réaliser un projet.
- 4Aide financière.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "coup de pouce"?
What does "coup de pouce" mean?
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Using “coup de pouce”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is C-O-U-P- -D-E- -P-O-U-C-E — every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ku də pus\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our French index: