ne pas valoir la corde pour le pendre
\nə pa va.lwaʁ la kɔʁd puʁ lə pɑ̃dʁ\
The verdict
“ne pas valoir la corde pour le pendre” 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
- 37
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Être un vaurien, une personne méprisable.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ne pas valoir la corde pour le pendre |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \nə pa va.lwaʁ la kɔʁd puʁ lə pɑ̃dʁ\ |
| Letters | 37 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ne pas valoir la corde pour le pendre” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for ne pas valoir la corde pour le pendre is 37 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \nə pa va.lwaʁ la kɔʁd puʁ lə pɑ̃dʁ\. 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: "Être un vaurien, une personne méprisable.".
No misspelling variants are generated for ne pas valoir la corde pour le pendre 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 valoir la corde pour le pendre, spelled N-E- -P-A-S- -V-A-L-O-I-R- -L-A- -C-O-R-D-E- -P-O-U-R- -L-E- -P-E-N-D-R-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Être un vaurien, une personne méprisable.
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 valoir la corde pour le pendre, 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-valoir-la-corde-pour-le-pendre
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "ne pas valoir la corde pour le pendre"?
What does "ne pas valoir la corde pour le pendre" mean?
How do you pronounce "ne pas valoir la corde pour le pendre"?
What language does "ne pas valoir la corde pour le pendre" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “ne pas valoir la corde pour le pendre”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is N-E- -P-A-S- -V-A-L-O-I-R- -L-A- -C-O-R-D-E- -P-O-U-R- -L-E- -P-E-N-D-R-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \nə pa va.lwaʁ la kɔʁd puʁ lə pɑ̃dʁ\ (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: