écourter

\e.kuʁ.te\

/\e.kuʁ.te\/ verb

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“écourter” is uncommon French (frequency #55,008 among 1,805 “É” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#55,008
frequency rank, French
1,805
“É” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Couper trop court.

Corpus desk

Index FR-ecourter · écourter · French

écourter · rank #55,008 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #55,008
  • LEN-LONG 8 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 1,805
  • PHOTO-FINISH échelonnent

Nearest frequency peer: échelonnent (-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.

Frequency neighbourhood for “écourter”

Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)

corpus weight

What this shows Bars show where “écourter” sits against the nearest ranked French headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for écourter
PropertyValue
Headwordécourter
LanguageFrench
Part of speechVerb
IPA\e.kuʁ.te\
Letters8
Frequency rank#55,008
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Où “écourter” se place dans la fréquence du français

Cette échelle va du noyau du français courant (gauche) jusqu'à la traîne des formes rares (droite).écourterse place ici:

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

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « échelonnent » (#55,007), « édifiés » (#55,009), « échalotes » (#55,006). Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

écourter is uncommon French at frequency #55,008 among 1,805 “É” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed \e.kuʁ.te\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.

écourter 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, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.

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 écourter, spelled É-C-O-U-R-T-E-R.

Definition

  1. 1
    Couper trop court.
  2. 2
    Abréger quelque chose.
  3. 3
    Retrancher les développements nécessaires d'un ouvrage de l’esprit.
  4. 4
    (En parlant d'un animal) Lui couper la queue et les oreilles.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how écourter appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Écourter des cheveux. Écourter un manteau, une jupe.
  2. […]; encore sa vie fut-elle accidentellement écourtée, puisqu’il périt « de langueur » un an après avoir été éborgné par un corbeau.

Synonyms

raccourcir

This word in other languages

scrimp(English)acortar(Español)abkürzen(Deutsch)

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 "écourter"?
"écourter" is spelled É-C-O-U-R-T-E-R. The IPA pronunciation is \e.kuʁ.te\.
What does "écourter" mean?
As a verb, "écourter" means: Couper trop court.
How do you pronounce "écourter"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "écourter" is \e.kuʁ.te\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "écourter" come from?
"écourter" 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 "écourter", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

éduquées#55,011vittoria#54,991ventiler#54,989tronches#54,975

What to do next

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PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list