renvoyer la balle
\ʁɑ̃.vwa.je la bal\
The verdict
“renvoyer la balle” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 17
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Répondre de manière désagréable à une agression ressentie.
Corpus desk
Index FR-renvoyer-la-balle · renvoyer la balle · French
renvoyer la balle · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 17 letters
- VOW-7 7 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "R" 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 | renvoyer la balle |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \ʁɑ̃.vwa.je la bal\ |
| Letters | 17 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « renvoyer la balle » en français
Rare enough to double-check
renvoyer la balle is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \ʁɑ̃.vwa.je la bal\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for renvoyer la balle in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is renvoyer la balle, spelled R-E-N-V-O-Y-E-R- -L-A- -B-A-L-L-E.
Definition
- 1Répondre de manière désagréable à une agression ressentie.
- 2Désigner l’autre comme responsable d’une mauvaise action.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how renvoyer la balle appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
D’une alternance à l’autre, les politiques se renvoient la balle, épinglant les programmes réécrits par leurs prédécesseurs ou la « baisse des horaires » (alors même que la France fait figure de championne en matière d’heures consacrées, à l’année, à l’enseignement des « fondamentaux »).
En matière d’émissions de gaz à effet de serre, particuliers et entreprises ont tendance à se renvoyer la balle, chacun estimant l’autre responsable de l’essentiel de la pollution.
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.