retourner sur ses pas
The verdict
“retourner sur ses pas” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 21
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Revenir après s’être éloigné.
Corpus desk
Index FR-retourner-sur-ses-pas · retourner sur ses pas · French
retourner sur ses pas · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 21 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 | retourner sur ses pas |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 21 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « retourner sur ses pas » en français
Rare enough to double-check
retourner sur ses pas is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Revenir après s’être éloigné.".
retourner sur ses pas has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is retourner sur ses pas, spelled R-E-T-O-U-R-N-E-R- -S-U-R- -S-E-S- -P-A-S.
Definition
- 1Revenir après s’être éloigné.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how retourner sur ses pas appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Mais retourner sur ses pas après s'être égaré, c'est connaître.
[…]; &le Duc au lieu de devancer l'armée Imperiale, comme il lui étoít facile, puis qu'il marchoit en païs ami, se contenta de la suivre de loin: comme il eût été seulement question de l'empêcher de retourner sur ses pas.
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.