main-d’œuvre

/\mɛ̃.d‿œvʁ\/ noun

Letters

12 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

main-d’œuvre is aFrenchnoun. It means: Travail de l’ouvrier considéré surtout par rapport au prix. Pronounced \mɛ̃.d‿œvʁ\.

Key facts for main-d’œuvre
PropertyValue
Headwordmain-d’œuvre
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\mɛ̃.d‿œvʁ\
Letters12
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

main-d’œuvre is not present in the top-100,000 ranked French corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for main-d’œuvre is 12 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \mɛ̃.d‿œvʁ\. 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 main-d’œuvre 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 main-d’œuvre, spelled M-A-I-N---D-’-Œ-U-V-R-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Travail de l’ouvrier considéré surtout par rapport au prix.
  2. 2
    L’ensemble des ouvriers de tel ou tel métier.
  3. 3
    Personne qui sans ni être ouvrières ni travailler avec leur mains, ni travailler dans le domaine des ouvriers est employée par un employeur.

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "main-d’œuvre"?
"main-d’œuvre" is spelled M-A-I-N---D-’-Œ-U-V-R-E. The IPA pronunciation is \mɛ̃.d‿œvʁ\.
What does "main-d’œuvre" mean?
As a noun, "main-d’œuvre" means: Travail de l’ouvrier considéré surtout par rapport au prix.
How do you pronounce "main-d’œuvre"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "main-d’œuvre" is \mɛ̃.d‿œvʁ\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "main-d’œuvre" come from?
"main-d’œuvre" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter M in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

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.