écourter
French, verb/e.kuʁ.te/
écourter is spelled É-C-O-U-R-T-E-R (8 letters) and appears about once in every 3 million words in written French, the 54,486th most frequent French word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Écourter is a French verb meaning “to shorten, curtail (make shorter e.g. by cutting)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) defines it as “Couper trop court”.
What does écourter mean in English?
verb
- 1
to shorten, curtail (make shorter e.g. by cutting)
- 2
to shorten (become shorter)
- 3
to dock, clip (cut the tail of e.g. a dog)
- 4
to cut short, curtail (shorten the time of something)
- 5
to cut short, cut
Source: English Wiktionary, French section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How French dictionaries define it
verb: 1. Couper trop court. 2. Abréger quelque chose. 3. Retrancher les développements nécessaires d'un ouvrage de l’esprit. 4. (En parlant d'un animal) Lui couper la queue et les oreilles.
The definition in the French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), in French.
Source: French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.
Forms of écourter
- avoir + past participle infinitive multiword-construction
- écourtant gerund participle present
- ayant + past participle gerund multiword-construction participle
- écourté participle past
- écourte first-person indicative present
- écourtes indicative present second-person
- écourtons first-person indicative plural
- écourtez indicative plural present
- écourtent indicative plural present
- écourtais first-person imperfect indicative
- écourtait imperfect indicative singular
- écourtions first-person imperfect indicative
- écourtiez imperfect indicative plural
- écourtaient imperfect indicative plural
- écourtai first-person historic indicative
- écourtas historic indicative past
- écourta historic indicative past
- écourtâmes first-person historic indicative
Source: English Wiktionary and French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
How do you pronounce écourter?
- /e.kuʁ.te/
- \e.kuʁ.te\
Sources: English Wiktionary, French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026); recordings from Wikimedia Commons.
English words that translate to écourter
Source: the translation tables of the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026.
How common is écourter in French?
écourter appears about once in every 3 million words in written French.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).