prendre froid
\pʁɑ̃dʁ fʁwa\
The verdict
“prendre froid” 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
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) — Tomber malade à cause du froid, développer une maladie respiratoire ou un état grippal, la cause étant le froid d'après la croyance populaire.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | prendre froid |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \pʁɑ̃dʁ fʁwa\ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “prendre froid” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for prendre froid is 13 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pʁɑ̃dʁ fʁwa\. 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: "Tomber malade à cause du froid, développer une maladie respiratoire ou un état grippal, la cause étant le froid d'après la croyance populaire.".
No misspelling variants are generated for prendre froid in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
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 prendre froid, spelled P-R-E-N-D-R-E- -F-R-O-I-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Tomber malade à cause du froid, développer une maladie respiratoire ou un état grippal, la cause étant le froid d'après la croyance populaire.
Synonyms
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.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “prendre froid, French word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/fr/mot/prendre-froid
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "prendre froid"?
What does "prendre froid" mean?
How do you pronounce "prendre froid"?
What language does "prendre froid" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “prendre froid”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is P-R-E-N-D-R-E- -F-R-O-I-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \pʁɑ̃dʁ fʁwa\ (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
Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our French index: