louvoyer
French, verb/lu.vwa.je/
louvoyer is spelled L-O-U-V-O-Y-E-R (8 letters) and appears about once in every 9 million words in written French, the 95,695th most frequent French word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Louvoyer is a French verb meaning “to tack” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) defines it as “Faire plusieurs routes en zigzag au plus près du vent, en lui présentant tantôt un côté du bâtiment, tantôt…”.
What does louvoyer mean in English?
verb
- 1
to tack
- 2
to avoid verbal commitment, to hedge
Source: English Wiktionary, French section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How French dictionaries define it
verb: 1. Faire plusieurs routes en zigzag au plus près du vent, en lui présentant tantôt un côté du bâtiment, tantôt l’autre. 2. Avancer en zigzaguant. 3. Prendre des détours pour arriver à son but ; éviter de se prononcer.
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 louvoyer
- avoir + past participle infinitive multiword-construction
- louvoyant gerund participle present
- ayant + past participle gerund multiword-construction participle
- louvoyé participle past
- louvoie first-person indicative present
- louvoies indicative present second-person
- louvoyons first-person indicative plural
- louvoyez indicative plural present
- louvoient indicative plural present
- louvoyais first-person imperfect indicative
- louvoyait imperfect indicative singular
- louvoyions first-person imperfect indicative
- louvoyiez imperfect indicative plural
- louvoyaient imperfect indicative plural
- louvoyai first-person historic indicative
- louvoyas historic indicative past
- louvoya historic indicative past
- louvoyâmes first-person historic indicative
Source: English Wiktionary and French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
How do you pronounce louvoyer?
- /lu.vwa.je/
- \lu.vwa.je\
Sources: English Wiktionary, French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026); recordings from Wikimedia Commons.
English words that translate to louvoyer
Source: the translation tables of the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026.
How common is louvoyer in French?
louvoyer appears about once in every 9 million words in written French.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).