fly-by-night
The verdict
“fly-by-night” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Voyou, filou.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | fly-by-night |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “fly-by-night” sits in French frequency
Rare enough to double-check
fly-by-night is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Voyou, filou.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for fly-by-night in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
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 fly-by-night, spelled F-L-Y---B-Y---N-I-G-H-T.
Definition
- 1Voyou, filou.
Synonyms
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “fly-by-night”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is F-L-Y---B-Y---N-I-G-H-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.