mettre la clé sous la porte
\mɛ.tʁə la kle su la pɔʁt\
The verdict
“mettre la clé sous la porte” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as a verb - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 27
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Quitter furtivement sa maison, disparaître pour se soustraire à une obligation, à une poursuite, etc
| 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) |
Where “mettre la clé sous la porte” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for mettre la clé sous la porte is 27 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \mɛ.tʁə la kle su la pɔʁt\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
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.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “mettre la clé sous la porte”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is M-E-T-T-R-E- -L-A- -C-L-É- -S-O-U-S- -L-A- -P-O-R-T-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \mɛ.tʁə la kle su la pɔʁt\ (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
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.