papillonner
\pa.pi.jɔ.ne\
The verdict
“papillonner” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Voltiger d’un objet à un autre, d’une personne à une autre sans s’arrêter à aucune.
Corpus desk
Index FR-papillonner · papillonner · French
papillonner · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "P" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | papillonner |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \pa.pi.jɔ.ne\ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « papillonner » en français
Rare enough to double-check
papillonner is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \pa.pi.jɔ.ne\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 6 senses are on record.
papillonner has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is papillonner, spelled P-A-P-I-L-L-O-N-N-E-R.
Definition
- 1Voltiger d’un objet à un autre, d’une personne à une autre sans s’arrêter à aucune.
- 2Passer d’une activité à une autre, sans en approfondir aucune.
- 3Être volage, faire un brin de cour galante.
- 4Papilloter, battre comme des ailes de papillons.
- 5Voler du linge dans les voitures des blanchisseurs.
- 6Produire des papillons, en parlant du ver à soie.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how papillonner appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Un silence pesant envahit l’espace clos de la cuisine où une série d’ombres difformes continuaient à papillonner de-ci de-là, accompagnées du bruit tout à coup discret de la vaisselle et de cuillers.
La jeune femme replongea dans le silence, et son regard fila de nouveau papillonner de-ci, de-là.
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.