proverbial
\pʁɔ.vɛʁ.bjal\
The verdict
“proverbial” is uncommon French (frequency #96,268 among 6,826 “P” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #96,268
- frequency rank, French
- 6,826
- “P” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Qui tient du proverbe, qui est passé en proverbe.
Corpus desk
Index FR-proverbial · proverbial · French
proverbial · rank #96,268 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #96,268
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,826
- PHOTO-FINISH propulsées
Nearest frequency peer: propulsées (-1 rank slots)
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.
Rangs de longue queue près de « proverbial »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- proclamaient
proclamaient
3,736 corpus weight
- prononçaient
prononçaient
3,735 corpus weight
- propulsées
propulsées
3,734 corpus weight
- proverbial
proverbial
3,733 corpus weight
- proximal
proximal
3,732 corpus weight
- précommander
précommander
3,730 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « proverbial » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | proverbial |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \pʁɔ.vɛʁ.bjal\ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #96,268 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « proverbial » en français
Rare enough to double-check
proverbial is uncommon French at frequency #96,268 among 6,826 “P” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed \pʁɔ.vɛʁ.bjal\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
proverbial doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our dataset records no confusable match here, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, 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 proverbial, spelled P-R-O-V-E-R-B-I-A-L.
Definition
- 1Qui tient du proverbe, qui est passé en proverbe.
- 2Aussi fameux qu’un proverbe, légendaire.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how proverbial appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Certaines gens abusent des façons de parler proverbiales.
Il est difficile de trouver population plus sympathique ; la race est belle, forte, honnête, travailleuse et hospitalière ; son courage est proverbial.
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); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "proverbial", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 10 letters (nearest by frequency rank).