enfant terrible

/\ɑ̃.fɑ̃ tɛ.ʁibl\/ noun

Letters

15 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

enfant terrible is aFrenchnoun. It means: Jeune personne turbulente, qui met son entourage dans des situations délicates. Pronounced \ɑ̃.fɑ̃ tɛ.ʁibl\.

Key facts for enfant terrible
PropertyValue
Headwordenfant terrible
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\ɑ̃.fɑ̃ tɛ.ʁibl\
Letters15
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

enfant terrible is not present in the top-100,000 ranked French corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for enfant terrible is 15 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ɑ̃.fɑ̃ tɛ.ʁibl\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for enfant terrible in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable French patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is enfant terrible, spelled E-N-F-A-N-T- -T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Jeune personne turbulente, qui met son entourage dans des situations délicates.
  2. 2
    Celui ou celle qui ne se soumet pas aux conventions établies, qui tend, par ses choix, à la redéfinition du mouvement auquel il appartient.

Synonyms

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "enfant terrible"?
"enfant terrible" is spelled E-N-F-A-N-T- -T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E. The IPA pronunciation is \ɑ̃.fɑ̃ tɛ.ʁibl\.
What does "enfant terrible" mean?
As a noun, "enfant terrible" means: Jeune personne turbulente, qui met son entourage dans des situations délicates.
How do you pronounce "enfant terrible"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "enfant terrible" is \ɑ̃.fɑ̃ tɛ.ʁibl\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "enfant terrible" come from?
"enfant terrible" 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.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter E in our French index:

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.