prendre par surprise

/\pʁɑ̃dʁ paʁ syʁ.pʁiz\/ verb

Letters

20 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

prendre par surprise is aFrenchverb. It means: Surprendre quelqu’un, sans qu’il ne s’y attende. Pronounced \pʁɑ̃dʁ paʁ syʁ.pʁiz\.

Key facts for prendre par surprise
PropertyValue
Headwordprendre par surprise
LanguageFrench
Part of speechVerb
IPA\pʁɑ̃dʁ paʁ syʁ.pʁiz\
Letters20
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

prendre par surprise is not present in the top-100,000 ranked French corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for prendre par surprise is 20 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pʁɑ̃dʁ paʁ syʁ.pʁiz\. 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: "Surprendre quelqu’un, sans qu’il ne s’y attende.".

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for prendre par surprise in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable French patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.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 par surprise, spelled P-R-E-N-D-R-E- -P-A-R- -S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Surprendre quelqu’un, sans qu’il ne s’y attende.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "prendre par surprise"?
"prendre par surprise" is spelled P-R-E-N-D-R-E- -P-A-R- -S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E. The IPA pronunciation is \pʁɑ̃dʁ paʁ syʁ.pʁiz\.
What does "prendre par surprise" mean?
As a verb, "prendre par surprise" means: Surprendre quelqu’un, sans qu’il ne s’y attende.
How do you pronounce "prendre par surprise"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "prendre par surprise" is \pʁɑ̃dʁ paʁ syʁ.pʁiz\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "prendre par surprise" come from?
"prendre par surprise" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter P in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.