mal-être
\ma.l‿ɛtʁ\
The verdict
“mal-être” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - État d'esprit vague et pénible, sentiment désagréable de langueur.
Corpus desk
Index FR-mal-etre · mal-être · French
mal-être · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 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 | mal-être |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ma.l‿ɛtʁ\ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « mal-être » en français
Rare enough to double-check
mal-être is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \ma.l‿ɛtʁ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "État d'esprit vague et pénible, sentiment désagréable de langueur.".
mal-être doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is mal-être, spelled M-A-L---Ê-T-R-E.
Definition
- 1État d'esprit vague et pénible, sentiment désagréable de langueur.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how mal-être appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
« J’ai vainement lutté contre ce mal-être intérieur, je n’ai pas été le plus fort. »
Philippe exprime son mal-être lors d'un entretien : « Je n'ai pas les pieds sur terre, je flotte, rien ne m'intéresse vraiment, je n'ai pas de désir, aucune envie de vivre. »
Antonyms
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.