maître à penser
\mɛ.tʁ‿a pɑ̃.se\
The verdict
“maître à penser” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 15
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Personnage dont on s’inspire spirituellement.
Corpus desk
Index FR-maitre-a-penser · maître à penser · French
maître à penser · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 15 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "M" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | maître à penser |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \mɛ.tʁ‿a pɑ̃.se\ |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « maître à penser » en français
Rare enough to double-check
maître à penser is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \mɛ.tʁ‿a pɑ̃.se\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Personnage dont on s’inspire spirituellement.".
maître à penser has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is maître à penser, spelled M-A-Î-T-R-E- -À- -P-E-N-S-E-R.
Definition
- 1Personnage dont on s’inspire spirituellement.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how maître à penser appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Malaparte devint le maître à penser du jeune Haquin.
Pour elle, la réfutation des maîtres à penser et du prophétisme, en particulier sartrien, comme de la médiatisation béachélienne, forme le noyau le plus incisif et le plus polémique des premiers numéros de la revue.
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.