défaillir
\de.fa.jiʁ\
The verdict
“défaillir” is uncommon French (frequency #70,561 among 5,307 “D” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #70,561
- frequency rank, French
- 5,307
- “D” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Perdre momentanément ses forces physiques ou morales, s’évanouir.
Corpus desk
Index FR-defaillir · défaillir · French
défaillir · rank #70,561 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #70,561
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,307
- PHOTO-FINISH décrocha
Nearest frequency peer: décrocha (-1 rank slots)
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.
Rangs de longue queue près de « défaillir »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- déconcentré
déconcentré
29,443 corpus weight
- décrier
décrier
29,442 corpus weight
- décrocha
décrocha
29,441 corpus weight
- défaillir
défaillir
29,440 corpus weight
- défausser
défausser
29,439 corpus weight
- défilait
défilait
29,438 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « défaillir » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | défaillir |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \de.fa.jiʁ\ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #70,561 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « défaillir » en français
Rare enough to double-check
défaillir is uncommon French at frequency #70,561 among 5,307 “D” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed \de.fa.jiʁ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
défaillir has no tracked misspelling variants, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Our source data has no etymology on file 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 défaillir, spelled D-É-F-A-I-L-L-I-R.
Definition
- 1Perdre momentanément ses forces physiques ou morales, s’évanouir.
- 2S’affaiblir, diminuer.
- 3Faire défaut, manquer.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how défaillir appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
J’avais comme une barre à l’estomac, et dans le cerveau quelque chose qui me brûlait. Je fus près de défaillir.
Zaheira se sentit défaillir. Elle s’appuya à un meuble, et baissa les yeux pour ne rien laisser deviner de son trouble.
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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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "défaillir", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).