enfant terrible
\ɑ̃.fɑ̃ tɛ.ʁibl\
The verdict
“enfant terrible” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. 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) - Jeune personne turbulente, qui met son entourage dans des situations délicates.
Corpus desk
Index FR-enfant-terrible · enfant terrible · French
enfant terrible · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 15 letters
- VOW-5 5 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 | enfant terrible |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ɑ̃.fɑ̃ tɛ.ʁibl\ |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « enfant terrible » en français
Rare enough to double-check
enfant terrible is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \ɑ̃.fɑ̃ tɛ.ʁibl\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for enfant terrible, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct French form is enfant terrible, spelled E-N-F-A-N-T- -T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E.
Definition
- 1Jeune personne turbulente, qui met son entourage dans des situations délicates.
- 2Celui ou celle qui ne se soumet pas aux conventions établies, qui tend, par ses choix, à la redéfinition du mouvement auquel il appartient.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how enfant terrible appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Norman Mailer, l’enfant terrible de la littérature américaine, est mort.
"L’enfant terrible du hardcore français" vient de nous offrir « de quoi occuper vos/nos soirées, en ces temps compliqués » : un DJ set de sept heures, joué le 14 février dernier au club Basis d’Utrecht.
Synonyms
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.