mettre la main
The verdict
“mettre la main” 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
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Se saisir de, s’emparer de ou simplement trouver.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mettre la main |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “mettre la main” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for mettre la main is 14 letters long, classified as a verb. 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 main, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is mettre la main, spelled M-E-T-T-R-E- -L-A- -M-A-I-N.
Definition
- 1Se saisir de, s’emparer de ou simplement trouver.
- 2S'occuper de.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “mettre la main”
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- -M-A-I-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- 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.