passer les bornes
\pa.se lɛ bɔʁn\
The verdict
“passer les bornes” 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
- 17
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Aller au-delà des limites permises.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | passer les bornes |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \pa.se lɛ bɔʁn\ |
| Letters | 17 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “passer les bornes” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for passer les bornes is 17 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pa.se lɛ bɔʁn\. 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: "Aller au-delà des limites permises.".
passer les bornes has no tracked misspelling variants, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is passer les bornes, spelled P-A-S-S-E-R- -L-E-S- -B-O-R-N-E-S.
Definition
- 1Aller au-delà des limites permises.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “passer les bornes”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is P-A-S-S-E-R- -L-E-S- -B-O-R-N-E-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \pa.se lɛ bɔʁn\ (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
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.