couvée
French, noun/ku.ve/
couvée is spelled C-O-U-V-É-E (6 letters) and appears about once in every 4 million words in written French, the 64,346th most frequent French word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Couvée is a French feminine noun meaning “clutch (a brood of chickens or a sitting of eggs)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is also a feminine singular of couvé. The French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) defines it as “Ensemble des œufs qu’un oiseau couve en même temps, puis les petits qui en sont éclos”.
What does couvée mean in English?
noun
- 1
feminineclutch (a brood of chickens or a sitting of eggs)
verb
- 1
femininefeminine singular of couvé
Source: English Wiktionary, French section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How French dictionaries define it
noun: 1. Ensemble des œufs qu’un oiseau couve en même temps, puis les petits qui en sont éclos. 2. Famille nombreuse.
The definition in the French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), in French.
Source: French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.
Forms of couvée
- couvées plural
Source: English Wiktionary and French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
How do you pronounce couvée?
- /ku.ve/
- \ku.ve\
Sources: English Wiktionary, French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026); recordings from Wikimedia Commons.
English words that translate to couvée
Source: the translation tables of the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026.
How common is couvée in French?
couvée appears about once in every 4 million words in written French.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).