fermer à clef
\fɛʁ.me a kle\
The verdict
“fermer à clef” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Se servir d’une clé pour verrouiller une porte, une armoire, etc.
Corpus desk
Index FR-fermer-a-clef · fermer à clef · French
fermer à clef · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 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 | fermer à clef |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \fɛʁ.me a kle\ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « fermer à clef » en français
Rare enough to double-check
fermer à clef is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \fɛʁ.me a kle\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Se servir d’une clé pour verrouiller une porte, une armoire, etc.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for fermer à clef in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, 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 fermer à clef, spelled F-E-R-M-E-R- -À- -C-L-E-F.
Definition
- 1Se servir d’une clé pour verrouiller une porte, une armoire, etc.
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.