face-à-main
\fa.sa.mɛ̃\
The verdict
“face-à-main” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Binocle à manche dont on se sert en le tenant à la main.
Corpus desk
Index FR-face-a-main · face-à-main · French
face-à-main · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "F" 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 | face-à-main |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \fa.sa.mɛ̃\ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « face-à-main » en français
Rare enough to double-check
face-à-main is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \fa.sa.mɛ̃\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Binocle à manche dont on se sert en le tenant à la main.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for face-à-main, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is face-à-main, spelled F-A-C-E---À---M-A-I-N.
Definition
- 1Binocle à manche dont on se sert en le tenant à la main.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how face-à-main appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
La comtesse avait horreur des effusions ; elle réfugia sa bienséance derrière un face-à-main.
Au bout d’une semaine, ma mère passa par là, s’arrêta, saisie, regarda de tous ses yeux —un binocle, un face-à-main, des lunettes pour le lointain— et cria d’horreur, en violant du pied toutes les sépultures…
This word in other languages
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.