en premier lieu
\ɑ̃ pʁə.mje ljø\
The verdict
“en premier lieu” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adverb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 15
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Tout d’abord ; avant tout.
Corpus desk
Index FR-en-premier-lieu · en premier lieu · French
en premier lieu · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 15 letters
- VOW-7 7 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "E" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | en premier lieu |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | \ɑ̃ pʁə.mje ljø\ |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « en premier lieu » en français
Rare enough to double-check
en premier lieu is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anadverb, transcribed \ɑ̃ pʁə.mje ljø\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Tout d’abord ; avant tout.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for en premier lieu, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is en premier lieu, spelled E-N- -P-R-E-M-I-E-R- -L-I-E-U.
Definition
- 1Tout d’abord ; avant tout.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how en premier lieu appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Il faudrait, en premier lieu, répandre parmi nous, par le perfectionnement des institutions de crédit, l’usage des billets, des promesses, des reconnaissances. C’est dire que nos banques devraient cesser de vivre sous l’empire d’un monopole aussi absolu qu’injuste et funeste.
La réhabilitation mémorielle concerne en premier lieu les victimes d’une politique coloniale de peuplement, par laquelle des condamnés de droit commun ont été transportés en Nouvelle-Calédonie pour des faits parfois mineurs.
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.