couver
\ku.ve\
The verdict
“couver” is an uncommon French word, ranked #51,988 in French word frequency and used as a verb.
- #51,988
- frequency rank, French
- 6
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Couvrir de son corps ses œufs pour entretenir la chaleur qui les fait éclore, en parlant des oiseaux.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | couver |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \ku.ve\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #51,988 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “couver” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for couver is 6 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ku.ve\. Corpus data places it at rank #51,988 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for couver, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
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. The correct French form is couver, spelled C-O-U-V-E-R.
Definition
- 1Couvrir de son corps ses œufs pour entretenir la chaleur qui les fait éclore, en parlant des oiseaux.
- 2S'occuper avec soin de quelqu'un, comme un oiseau le fait de ses œufs.
- 3Cacher, préparer sourdement.
- 4Être caché sous la cendre.
- 5(En parlant d'une maladie, d'une catastrophe, d'un coup d'état, d'un sentiment, etc.) se développer, se préparer d'une manière qui n'est pas encore apparente.
- 6Il faut laisser couver cela, se dit d’une chose qu’il ne faut pas se presser de faire.
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); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “couver”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is C-O-U-V-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ku.ve\ (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
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.