de temps à autre
\də tɑ̃.z‿a otʁ\
The verdict
“de temps à autre” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as an adverb - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 16
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - De fois à autre, quelquefois.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | de temps à autre |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | \də tɑ̃.z‿a otʁ\ |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “de temps à autre” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for de temps à autre is 16 letters long, classified as an adverb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \də tɑ̃.z‿a otʁ\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "De fois à autre, quelquefois.".
de temps à autre doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. 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.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 de temps à autre, spelled D-E- -T-E-M-P-S- -À- -A-U-T-R-E.
Definition
- 1De fois à autre, quelquefois.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “de temps à autre”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is D-E- -T-E-M-P-S- -À- -A-U-T-R-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \də tɑ̃.z‿a otʁ\ (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.