lieu commun
The verdict
“lieu commun” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as a noun - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 11
- letters
Dominant Wiktionary sense: Source générale communément admise d’où un orateur peut tirer ses arguments.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | lieu commun |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ljø kɔ.mœ̃\ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “lieu commun” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for lieu commun is 11 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ljø kɔ.mœ̃\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for lieu commun 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 lieu commun, spelled L-I-E-U- -C-O-M-M-U-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Source générale communément admise d’où un orateur peut tirer ses arguments.
- 2Réflexions générales qu’on développe à l’occasion de sujets particuliers.
- 3Idée usée ou rebattue.
This word in other languages
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, “lieu commun, 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/lieu-commun
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “lieu commun”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is L-I-E-U- -C-O-M-M-U-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ljø kɔ.mœ̃\ (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 L in our French index: