faire mal
\fɛʁ mal\
The verdict
“faire mal” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Infliger de la douleur.
Corpus desk
Index FR-faire-mal · faire mal · French
faire mal · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | faire mal |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \fɛʁ mal\ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « faire mal » en français
Rare enough to double-check
faire mal is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \fɛʁ mal\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for faire mal, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct French form is faire mal, spelled F-A-I-R-E- -M-A-L.
Definition
- 1Infliger de la douleur.
- 2Effectuer une action mauvaise, ou de la mauvaise façon.
- 3Dans l’expression ça va faire mal, on parle de quelque chose qui va faire du bruit, qui va surprendre.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how faire mal appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Les cordelettes m’entraient dans la chair, les mains me faisaient mal et la position dans laquelle mes bras étaient maintenus me brisaient les épaules.
Il fait mal son travail.
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.