pincer
Letters
6 characters
Frequency Rank
#30,739
in French word usage
Misspellings
9
tracked variants
Confusables
20
similar word pairs
pincer is aFrenchverb. It means: Serrer fortement avec une pince, avec des tenailles ou autres instruments semblables. Pronounced \pɛ̃.se\. Often confused with pine and piper.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | pincer |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \pɛ̃.se\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #30,739 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for pincer is 6 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pɛ̃.se\. Corpus data places it at rank #30,739 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 17 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for pincer, with forms such as "ipncer", "picner", and "pinccer". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "pine", "piper", "pinte", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
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 pincer, spelled P-I-N-C-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Serrer fortement avec une pince, avec des tenailles ou autres instruments semblables.
- 2Serrer fortement avec des doigts, ou un objet, conçu comme une pince, ou autre chose.
- 3Rapprocher en serrant fortement.
- 4Causer une douleur, produire une sensation vive et désagréable.
- 5Causer une vive douleur morale.
- 6Surprendre, saisir, prendre sur le fait.
- 7Être puni de quelque imprudence qu’on a faite.
- 8Être amoureux, aimer.
- 9Faire vibrer les cordes d’un instrument en les serrant et les tirant avec les doigts.
- 10Couper, généralement avec le bout des doigts ou avec l’ongle, une partie de plante pour empêcher qu’elle ne pousse trop au détriment d’autres ou éliminer des parties malades ou parasitées.
- 11Approcher l’éperon du flanc du cheval, sans donner de coup ni appuyer.
- 12Aller au plus près du vent.
- 13Faire rissoler fortement.
- 14Utiliser le pince-pâte sur les bords d’une tarte.
- 15Mettre les menottes.
- 16Morsure d’animal pas violente.
- 17Attraper une maladie.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ipncer,picner,pinccer,pincerr,pincre,pinecr,pinncer,pnicer,ppincer
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for pincer
Misspelling Variants of "pincer"
Frequency rank: #30,739 in French
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our French index: