ne pas perdre le nord
\nə pa pɛʁ.dʁə lə nɔʁ\
The verdict
“ne pas perdre le nord” 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
- 21
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Avoir une idée fixe et ne pas la lâcher.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ne pas perdre le nord |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \nə pa pɛʁ.dʁə lə nɔʁ\ |
| Letters | 21 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ne pas perdre le nord” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for ne pas perdre le nord is 21 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \nə pa pɛʁ.dʁə lə nɔʁ\. 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: "Avoir une idée fixe et ne pas la lâcher.".
No misspelling variants are generated for ne pas perdre le nord 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 ne pas perdre le nord, spelled N-E- -P-A-S- -P-E-R-D-R-E- -L-E- -N-O-R-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Avoir une idée fixe et ne pas la lâcher.
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, “ne pas perdre le nord, 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/ne-pas-perdre-le-nord
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “ne pas perdre le nord”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is N-E- -P-A-S- -P-E-R-D-R-E- -L-E- -N-O-R-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \nə pa pɛʁ.dʁə lə nɔʁ\ (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 N in our French index: