perdre la boule
\pɛʁdʁ la bul\
The verdict
“perdre la boule” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 15
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Être, de façon permanente, désorienté ou sénile.
Corpus desk
Index FR-perdre-la-boule · perdre la boule · French
perdre la boule · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 15 letters
- VOW-6 6 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 | perdre la boule |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \pɛʁdʁ la bul\ |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « perdre la boule » en français
Rare enough to double-check
perdre la boule is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \pɛʁdʁ la bul\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Être, de façon permanente, désorienté ou sénile.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for perdre la boule, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No borrowing history is documented 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 perdre la boule, spelled P-E-R-D-R-E- -L-A- -B-O-U-L-E.
Definition
- 1Être, de façon permanente, désorienté ou sénile.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how perdre la boule appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
BETTINA – Si tu t'approches de moi soudain Je tremble comme une petite poule PIPPO – Quand ma main rencontre ta main Crac ! c'est fini, je perds la boule
Si elles « perdaient la boule » de cette façon pour une chose dite une heure auparavant, en revanche il était impossible de leur ôter de la tête ce qu’elles avaient une fois entendu dire par la sœur ou par la cousine.
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.