détestaient

\de.tɛs.tɛ\

/\de.tɛs.tɛ\/ verb

The verdict

“détestaient” is uncommon French (frequency #57,238 among 5,307 “D” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#57,238
frequency rank, French
5,307
“D” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Troisième personne du pluriel de l’imparfait de l’indicatif de détester.

Corpus desk

Index FR-detestaient · détestaient · French

détestaient · rank #57,238 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #57,238
  • LEN-MEGA 11 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 5,307
  • PHOTO-FINISH déterre

Nearest frequency peer: déterre (-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 « détestaient »

Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court

corpus weight

What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « détestaient » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for détestaient
PropertyValue
Headworddétestaient
LanguageFrench
Part of speechVerb
IPA\de.tɛs.tɛ\
Letters11
Frequency rank#57,238
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Longue queue: rang de « détestaient » en français

De gauche à droite: le peu qui porte la parole quotidienne, puis la longue queue quasi invisible.détestaienttombe dans cette queue de rareté:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Voisins rares de la même bande: « déterre » (#57,237), « dévaloriser » (#57,239), « désespérante » (#57,236). Parmi 5,307 lemmes en « D », « détestaient » est au #57,238. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

détestaient is uncommon French at frequency #57,238 among 5,307 “D” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed \de.tɛs.tɛ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Troisième personne du pluriel de l’imparfait de l’indicatif de détester.".

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for détestaient, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is détestaient, spelled D-É-T-E-S-T-A-I-E-N-T.

Definition

  1. 1
    Troisième personne du pluriel de l’imparfait de l’indicatif de détester.

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

How do you spell "détestaient"?
"détestaient" is spelled D-É-T-E-S-T-A-I-E-N-T. The IPA pronunciation is \de.tɛs.tɛ\.
What does "détestaient" mean?
As a verb, "détestaient" means: Troisième personne du pluriel de l’imparfait de l’indicatif de détester.
How do you pronounce "détestaient"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "détestaient" is \de.tɛs.tɛ\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "détestaient" come from?
"détestaient" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "détestaient", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 11 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list