être sur ses gardes
\ɛtʁ syʁ sɛ ɡaʁd\
The verdict
“être sur ses gardes” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 19
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Être en alerte ; prêt à réagir en cas de problème ou de danger.
Corpus desk
Index FR-etre-sur-ses-gardes · être sur ses gardes · French
être sur ses gardes · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 19 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 sur ses gardes |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \ɛtʁ syʁ sɛ ɡaʁd\ |
| Letters | 19 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « être sur ses gardes » en français
Rare enough to double-check
être sur ses gardes is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \ɛtʁ syʁ sɛ ɡaʁd\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Être en alerte ; prêt à réagir en cas de problème ou de danger.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for être sur ses gardes in our index, 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, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is être sur ses gardes, spelled Ê-T-R-E- -S-U-R- -S-E-S- -G-A-R-D-E-S.
Definition
- 1Être en alerte ; prêt à réagir en cas de problème ou de danger.
Synonyms
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.