ex post facto

/\ɛks pɔst fak.to\/ adj

Letters

13 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

ex post facto is anFrenchadj. It means: Postérieur au fait et, généralement, rétroactif sur celui-ci. Pronounced \ɛks pɔst fak.to\.

Key facts for ex post facto
PropertyValue
Headwordex post facto
LanguageFrench
Part of speechAdj
IPA\ɛks pɔst fak.to\
Letters13
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

ex post facto 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 ex post facto is 13 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ɛks pɔst fak.to\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for ex post facto 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 ex post facto, spelled E-X- -P-O-S-T- -F-A-C-T-O, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Postérieur au fait et, généralement, rétroactif sur celui-ci.
  2. 2
    Qualifie une loi édictée après un fait mais qui s’applique rétroactivement à ce fait antérieur.

Synonyms

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "ex post facto"?
"ex post facto" is spelled E-X- -P-O-S-T- -F-A-C-T-O. The IPA pronunciation is \ɛks pɔst fak.to\.
What does "ex post facto" mean?
As an adj, "ex post facto" means: Postérieur au fait et, généralement, rétroactif sur celui-ci.
How do you pronounce "ex post facto"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "ex post facto" is \ɛks pɔst fak.to\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "ex post facto" come from?
"ex post facto" 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 E in our French index:

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