se taire
\sə tɛʁ\
The verdict
“se taire” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Garder le silence ; s’abstenir de parler.
Corpus desk
Index FR-se-taire · se taire · French
se taire · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 taire |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \sə tɛʁ\ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « se taire » en français
Rare enough to double-check
se taire is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \sə tɛʁ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
No generated misspelling entries exist for se taire in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is se taire, spelled S-E- -T-A-I-R-E.
Definition
- 1Garder le silence ; s’abstenir de parler.
- 2Ne pas divulguer un secret.
- 3Cesser de faire du bruit, ne plus être entendu.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how se taire appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Cette terrible histoire des Vaudois, dois-je en parler ou m’en taire ? En parler ? Elle est trop cruelle ; personne ne la racontera sans que la plume n'hésite, et que l'encre, en écrivant, ne blanchisse de larmes.
– Je suis citoyen britannique ! – continua Bert, obstiné. – Vous n’êtes pas obligés d’écouter, mais rien ne me force à me taire.
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.