faute de pire
\fot də piʁ\
The verdict
“faute de pire” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as an adverb - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - À défaut de quelque chose de plus néfaste, en sous-entendant que le pire serait préférable.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | faute de pire |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | \fot də piʁ\ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “faute de pire” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for faute de pire is 13 letters long, classified as an adverb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \fot də piʁ\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "À défaut de quelque chose de plus néfaste, en sous-entendant que le pire serait préférable.".
No misspelling variants are generated for faute de pire in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. 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 faute de pire, spelled F-A-U-T-E- -D-E- -P-I-R-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1À défaut de quelque chose de plus néfaste, en sous-entendant que le pire serait préférable.
Antonyms
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.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “faute de pire, French word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/fr/mot/faute-de-pire
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Using “faute de pire”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is F-A-U-T-E- -D-E- -P-I-R-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \fot də piʁ\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our French index: