perdre la boussole
The verdict
“perdre la boussole” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 18
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Devenir fou.
Corpus desk
Index FR-perdre-la-boussole · perdre la boussole · French
perdre la boussole · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 18 letters
- VOW-7 7 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 boussole |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 18 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « perdre la boussole » en français
Rare enough to double-check
perdre la boussole is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Devenir fou.".
perdre la boussole doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. 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.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, 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 perdre la boussole, spelled P-E-R-D-R-E- -L-A- -B-O-U-S-S-O-L-E.
Definition
- 1Devenir fou.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how perdre la boussole appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
— Pensez ! Ça fait plus de vingt ans qu'elle est là ! Et jamais perdu la boussole, malgré ses coups dans le nez ! Elle vous en raconterait, elle !
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.