essayer de
\e.se.je də\
The verdict
“essayer de” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Mettre à l’essai une chose, une personne, pour voir si elle est propre à ce qu’on veut en faire.
Corpus desk
Index FR-essayer-de · essayer de · French
essayer de · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 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 | essayer de |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \e.se.je də\ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « essayer de » en français
Rare enough to double-check
essayer de is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \e.se.je də\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for essayer de, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, 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 essayer de, spelled E-S-S-A-Y-E-R- -D-E.
Definition
- 1Mettre à l’essai une chose, une personne, pour voir si elle est propre à ce qu’on veut en faire.
- 2Tâcher de.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how essayer de appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Je ne veux point prendre de ces remèdes, j’en ai essayé. — Il veut essayer de tout.
Prenez cet homme à votre service, essayez-en deux ou trois mois.
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.