être sur les dents

/\ɛtʁ syʁ le dɑ̃\/ verb

Letters

18 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

être sur les dents is aFrenchverb. It means: Être en pleine activité, surmené, consacrer tout son temps au travail ou à une tâche. Pronounced \ɛtʁ syʁ le dɑ̃\.

Key facts for être sur les dents
PropertyValue
Headwordêtre sur les dents
LanguageFrench
Part of speechVerb
IPA\ɛtʁ syʁ le dɑ̃\
Letters18
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

être sur les dents 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 être sur les dents is 18 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ɛtʁ syʁ le dɑ̃\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for être sur les dents 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 être sur les dents, spelled Ê-T-R-E- -S-U-R- -L-E-S- -D-E-N-T-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Être en pleine activité, surmené, consacrer tout son temps au travail ou à une tâche.
  2. 2
    Être harassé de fatigue, extrêmement las, fleurter avec ses limites physiques ou psychologiques.
  3. 3
    Être inquiet, anxieux, obsédé ou très fortement préoccupé par quelque chose.

Synonyms

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "être sur les dents"?
"être sur les dents" is spelled Ê-T-R-E- -S-U-R- -L-E-S- -D-E-N-T-S. The IPA pronunciation is \ɛtʁ syʁ le dɑ̃\.
What does "être sur les dents" mean?
As a verb, "être sur les dents" means: Être en pleine activité, surmené, consacrer tout son temps au travail ou à une tâche.
How do you pronounce "être sur les dents"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "être sur les dents" is \ɛtʁ syʁ le dɑ̃\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "être sur les dents" come from?
"être sur les dents" 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 Ê in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

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