coup de tête
\ku də tɛt\
The verdict
“coup de tête” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Coup donné avec la tête.
Corpus desk
Index FR-coup-de-tete · coup de tête · French
coup de tête · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 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 | coup de tête |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ku də tɛt\ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « coup de tête » en français
Rare enough to double-check
coup de tête is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \ku də tɛt\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for coup de tête, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is coup de tête, spelled C-O-U-P- -D-E- -T-Ê-T-E.
Definition
- 1Coup donné avec la tête.
- 2Acte imprévu et hardi, fait étourdiment et sans réflexion.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how coup de tête appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Le Boer agrippait fermement son Spencer, tentant de l’incliner vers son agresseur pour tirer. Voyant cela, et sentant ses forces décroître en raison du choc subi lors de son saut, Abraham assena un violent coup de tête à son adversaire.
— Ce coup de tête est déplorable. — Le désespoir nous inspire autrement que le calme ; il est fâcheux que la pauvre enfant ait été réduite au désespoir.
Synonyms
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.