état civil

/\e.ta si.vil\/ noun

The verdict

“état civil” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as a noun — the kind of word writers most often double-check.

Unranked
below top-frequency French
10
letters

Dominant Wiktionary sense: Condition d’une personne d’après les actes publics qui établissent sa naissance, sa filiation légitime, illégitime ou adoptive, son mariage, son décès, etc.

Key facts for état civil
PropertyValue
Headwordétat civil
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\e.ta si.vil\
Letters10
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Where “état civil” sits in French frequency

état civil falls outside the top-100,000 ranked French words — the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for état civil is 10 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \e.ta si.vil\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Condition d’une personne d’après les actes publics qui établissent sa naissance, sa filiation légitime, illégitime ou adoptive, son mariage, son décès, etc.".

No misspelling variants are generated for état civil in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. 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 état civil, spelled É-T-A-T- -C-I-V-I-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Condition d’une personne d’après les actes publics qui établissent sa naissance, sa filiation légitime, illégitime ou adoptive, son mariage, son décès, etc.

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "état civil"?
"état civil" is spelled É-T-A-T- -C-I-V-I-L. The IPA pronunciation is \e.ta si.vil\.
What does "état civil" mean?
As a noun, "état civil" means: Condition d’une personne d’après les actes publics qui établissent sa naissance, sa filiation légitime, illégitime ou adoptive, son mariage, son décès, etc.
How do you pronounce "état civil"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "état civil" is \e.ta si.vil\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "état civil" come from?
"état civil" 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.

Using “état civil”

The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.

  • The one correct French spelling is É-T-A-T- -C-I-V-I-L — every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
  • Say it as \e.ta si.vil\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
  • Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words

Nearby French words

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

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.