piquer au vif
\pi.ke o vif\
The verdict
“piquer au vif” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Piquer jusqu’au sang.
Corpus desk
Index FR-piquer-au-vif · piquer au vif · French
piquer au vif · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 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 | piquer au vif |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \pi.ke o vif\ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « piquer au vif » en français
Rare enough to double-check
piquer au vif is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \pi.ke o vif\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for piquer au vif, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is piquer au vif, spelled P-I-Q-U-E-R- -A-U- -V-I-F.
Definition
- 1Piquer jusqu’au sang.
- 2Exciter ; irriter.
- 3Faire une offense très sensible, en particulier dans un domaine qui tient particulièrement à cœur.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how piquer au vif appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
La viande est piquée au vif.
À la vue de ces appareils prodigieux au nickel étincelant, que combinent certains acrobates pour présenter dans les cirques un numéro sensationnel, notre curiosité pourra être piquée au vif […]
Synonyms
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.