être au ciel
\ɛ.tʁ‿o sjɛl\
The verdict
“être au ciel” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Être mort.
Corpus desk
Index FR-etre-au-ciel · être au ciel · French
être au ciel · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "Ê" 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 | être au ciel |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \ɛ.tʁ‿o sjɛl\ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « être au ciel » en français
Rare enough to double-check
être au ciel is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \ɛ.tʁ‿o sjɛl\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Être mort.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for être au ciel, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is être au ciel, spelled Ê-T-R-E- -A-U- -C-I-E-L.
Definition
- 1Être mort.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how être au ciel appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
— Une faiseuse d’ange, une Ndébélée… Elize a perdu son bébé. Et tu n’as pas à t’en faire pour lui, il est au ciel. Ni pour Elize d’ailleurs, elle est entre de très bonnes mains, chrétiennes. En revanche, c’est toi qui m’inquiètes…
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.