se mettre en quatre
\sə mɛ.tʁ‿ɑ̃ katʁ\
The verdict
“se mettre en quatre” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 19
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Faire des efforts considérables pour rendre service à quelqu’un.
Corpus desk
Index FR-se-mettre-en-quatre · se mettre en quatre · French
se mettre en quatre · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 19 letters
- VOW-7 7 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "S" 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 | se mettre en quatre |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \sə mɛ.tʁ‿ɑ̃ katʁ\ |
| Letters | 19 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « se mettre en quatre » en français
Rare enough to double-check
se mettre en quatre is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \sə mɛ.tʁ‿ɑ̃ katʁ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Faire des efforts considérables pour rendre service à quelqu’un.".
No misspelling variants are generated for se mettre en quatre in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is se mettre en quatre, spelled S-E- -M-E-T-T-R-E- -E-N- -Q-U-A-T-R-E.
Definition
- 1Faire des efforts considérables pour rendre service à quelqu’un.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how se mettre en quatre appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Nous autres, nous la lui souhaitons tous les ans, et tout le monde se met en quatre pour faire de son mieux.
On pousse si loin dans notre pays l'apathie pour les affaires lointaines, que j'ai vu rester sans réponse de simples demandes de catalogues, germes peut-être d'importantes affaires. D'Angleterre et des États-Unis, en cas pareil, il afflue toutes sortes de documents ; on se met en quatre pour conquérir un nouveau client
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.