se salir les mains
\sə sa.liʁ le mɛ̃\
The verdict
“se salir les mains” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 18
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Couvrir ses mains de saleté, les rendre sales.
Corpus desk
Index FR-se-salir-les-mains · se salir les mains · French
se salir les mains · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 18 letters
- VOW-6 6 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 salir les mains |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \sə sa.liʁ le mɛ̃\ |
| Letters | 18 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « se salir les mains » en français
Rare enough to double-check
se salir les mains is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \sə sa.liʁ le mɛ̃\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for se salir les mains in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is se salir les mains, spelled S-E- -S-A-L-I-R- -L-E-S- -M-A-I-N-S.
Definition
- 1Couvrir ses mains de saleté, les rendre sales.
- 2Se compromettre, se mettre à agir de manière malhonnête.
- 3Se mettre au travail.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how se salir les mains appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
A ce stade, pas de problèmes, en agriculture, on est habitué à se salir les mains donc à se les laver souvent ou à porter des gants.
Un ancien ouvrier travaillant à la propriété et qui avait à côté un autre métier, avait pour habitude de travailler dès qu'il le pouvait avec des gants et détestait se salir les mains.
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.