oderint, dum metuant
\ɔ.de.ʁɛ̃t dɔm me.ty.ɑ̃t\
The verdict
“oderint, dum metuant” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as a phrase - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 20
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Qu’ils me haïssent, pourvu qu’ils me craignent.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | oderint, dum metuant |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Phrase |
| IPA | \ɔ.de.ʁɛ̃t dɔm me.ty.ɑ̃t\ |
| Letters | 20 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “oderint, dum metuant” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for oderint, dum metuant is 20 letters long, classified as a phrase, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ɔ.de.ʁɛ̃t dɔm me.ty.ɑ̃t\. 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: "Qu’ils me haïssent, pourvu qu’ils me craignent.".
No misspelling variants are generated for oderint, dum metuant 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 oderint, dum metuant, spelled O-D-E-R-I-N-T-,- -D-U-M- -M-E-T-U-A-N-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Qu’ils me haïssent, pourvu qu’ils me craignent.
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, “oderint, dum metuant, 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/oderint-dum-metuant
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Using “oderint, dum metuant”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is O-D-E-R-I-N-T-,- -D-U-M- -M-E-T-U-A-N-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ɔ.de.ʁɛ̃t dɔm me.ty.ɑ̃t\ (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 O in our French index: