mettre la clé sous la porte
\mɛ.tʁə la kle su la pɔʁt\
The verdict
“mettre la clé sous la porte” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 27
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Quitter furtivement sa maison, disparaître pour se soustraire à une obligation, à une poursuite, etc
Corpus desk
Index FR-mettre-la-cle-sous-la-po · mettre la clé sous la porte · French
mettre la clé sous la porte · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 27 letters
- VOW-9 9 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 | mettre la clé sous la porte |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \mɛ.tʁə la kle su la pɔʁt\ |
| Letters | 27 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « mettre la clé sous la porte » en français
Rare enough to double-check
mettre la clé sous la porte is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \mɛ.tʁə la kle su la pɔʁt\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for mettre la clé sous la porte, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is mettre la clé sous la porte, spelled M-E-T-T-R-E- -L-A- -C-L-É- -S-O-U-S- -L-A- -P-O-R-T-E.
Definition
- 1Quitter furtivement sa maison, disparaître pour se soustraire à une obligation, à une poursuite, etc
- 2Abandonner une entreprise, la fermer définitivement et complètement.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how mettre la clé sous la porte appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
"Si nous ne faisons rien, d'ici trois ans les Restos du Cœur devront mettre la clef sous la porte".
Lorsque le dernier café-restaurant met la clé sous la porte, que les commerces affichent tous « bail à céder » sur la vitrine, garder une capacité d’imagination n’est toutefois pas chose aisée.
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.