faire semblant
\fɛʁ sɑ̃.blɑ̃\
The verdict
“faire semblant” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Feindre ; simuler.
Corpus desk
Index FR-faire-semblant · faire semblant · French
faire semblant · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 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 | faire semblant |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \fɛʁ sɑ̃.blɑ̃\ |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « faire semblant » en français
Rare enough to double-check
faire semblant is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \fɛʁ sɑ̃.blɑ̃\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Feindre ; simuler.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for faire semblant, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 faire semblant, spelled F-A-I-R-E- -S-E-M-B-L-A-N-T.
Definition
- 1Feindre ; simuler.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how faire semblant appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Milady regardait par la fenêtre, et fit semblant de ne pas entendre la porte qui s’ouvrait.
On a souvent vu des vivants faire semblant d'être morts. Mais jamais des morts faire semblant d'être vivants.
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.