fouiner
French, verb/fwi.ne/
fouiner is spelled F-O-U-I-N-E-R (7 letters) and appears about once in every 2 million words in written French, the 48,397th most frequent French word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Fouiner is a French verb meaning “to furrow, ferret, snoop around” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) defines it as “S’esquiver à la façon d’une fouine”.
What does fouiner mean in English?
verb
- 1
informalto furrow, ferret, snoop around
Source: English Wiktionary, French section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How French dictionaries define it
verb: 1. S’esquiver à la façon d’une fouine. 2. Fouiller indiscrètement dans des meubles, dans des papiers, etc. 3. Faire aléatoirement les gestes de quelqu'un qui cherche quelque chose.
The definition in the French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), in French.
Source: French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.
Forms of fouiner
- avoir + past participle infinitive multiword-construction
- fouinant gerund participle present
- ayant + past participle gerund multiword-construction participle
- fouiné participle past
- fouine first-person indicative present
- fouines indicative present second-person
- fouinons first-person indicative plural
- fouinez indicative plural present
- fouinent indicative plural present
- fouinais first-person imperfect indicative
- fouinait imperfect indicative singular
- fouinions first-person imperfect indicative
- fouiniez imperfect indicative plural
- fouinaient imperfect indicative plural
- fouinai first-person historic indicative
- fouinas historic indicative past
- fouina historic indicative past
- fouinâmes first-person historic indicative
Source: English Wiktionary and French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
How do you pronounce fouiner?
- /fwi.ne/
- \fwi.ne\
Sources: English Wiktionary, French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026); recordings from Wikimedia Commons.
English words that translate to fouiner
Source: the translation tables of the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026.
How common is fouiner in French?
fouiner appears about once in every 2 million words in written French.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).