ne valoir rien
\nə va.lwaʁ ʁjɛ̃\
The verdict
“ne valoir rien” 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) - N’avoir presque aucun mérite, n’être presque d’aucune valeur, d’aucune utilité, ne pas avoir les qualités requises; cela se dit tant des choses qui se vendent que des autres choses, même des ouvrag...
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ne valoir rien |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \nə va.lwaʁ ʁjɛ̃\ |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ne valoir rien” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for ne valoir rien is 14 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \nə va.lwaʁ ʁjɛ̃\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for ne valoir rien 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 valoir rien, spelled N-E- -V-A-L-O-I-R- -R-I-E-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1N’avoir presque aucun mérite, n’être presque d’aucune valeur, d’aucune utilité, ne pas avoir les qualités requises; cela se dit tant des choses qui se vendent que des autres choses, même des ouvrages de l’esprit.
- 2Ne signifier rien de bon, être de mauvais augure.
- 3Être mauvais, à quelqu’un, relativement à telle ou telle circonstance.
- 4Être un méchant homme, un homme dangereux.
Synonyms
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 valoir rien, 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-valoir-rien
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Using “ne valoir rien”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is N-E- -V-A-L-O-I-R- -R-I-E-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \nə va.lwaʁ ʁjɛ̃\ (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: