faire volte-face
\fɛʁ vɔl.tfas\
The verdict
“faire volte-face” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 16
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Action de se retourner rapidement pour faire face.
Corpus desk
Index FR-faire-volte-face · faire volte-face · French
faire volte-face · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 16 letters
- VOW-7 7 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 volte-face |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \fɛʁ vɔl.tfas\ |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « faire volte-face » en français
Rare enough to double-check
faire volte-face is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \fɛʁ vɔl.tfas\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Action de se retourner rapidement pour faire face.".
No misspelling variants are generated for faire volte-face in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, 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 volte-face, spelled F-A-I-R-E- -V-O-L-T-E---F-A-C-E.
Definition
- 1Action de se retourner rapidement pour faire face.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how faire volte-face appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
La bête s’ébroua, comme une montagne secouée par les soubresauts de la terre. Elle poussa un long barrissement, plaintif et rageur, et fit volte-face pour affronter le tumulte, ses oreilles en éventail.
Faites volte-face et disparaissez. C’est par là la sortie…
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.