malin comme une mouche
\ma.lɛ̃ kɔ.m‿yn.muʃ\
The verdict
“malin comme une mouche” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as an adjective - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 22
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Capable de se tirer avec astuce de situations difficiles.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | malin comme une mouche |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \ma.lɛ̃ kɔ.m‿yn.muʃ\ |
| Letters | 22 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “malin comme une mouche” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for malin comme une mouche is 22 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ma.lɛ̃ kɔ.m‿yn.muʃ\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Capable de se tirer avec astuce de situations difficiles.".
No misspelling variants are generated for malin comme une mouche 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 malin comme une mouche, spelled M-A-L-I-N- -C-O-M-M-E- -U-N-E- -M-O-U-C-H-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Capable de se tirer avec astuce de situations difficiles.
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, “malin comme une mouche, 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/malin-comme-une-mouche
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “malin comme une mouche”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is M-A-L-I-N- -C-O-M-M-E- -U-N-E- -M-O-U-C-H-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ma.lɛ̃ kɔ.m‿yn.muʃ\ (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 M in our French index: