sur le bout du doigt
\syʁ lə bu dy dwa\
The verdict
“sur le bout du doigt” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adverb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 20
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Parfaitement, en parlant d’un sujet qu’on maîtrise.
Corpus desk
Index FR-sur-le-bout-du-doigt · sur le bout du doigt · French
sur le bout du doigt · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 20 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 | sur le bout du doigt |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | \syʁ lə bu dy dwa\ |
| Letters | 20 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « sur le bout du doigt » en français
Rare enough to double-check
sur le bout du doigt is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anadverb, transcribed \syʁ lə bu dy dwa\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Parfaitement, en parlant d’un sujet qu’on maîtrise.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for sur le bout du doigt, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is sur le bout du doigt, spelled S-U-R- -L-E- -B-O-U-T- -D-U- -D-O-I-G-T.
Definition
- 1Parfaitement, en parlant d’un sujet qu’on maîtrise.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how sur le bout du doigt appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Il connaissait tous ses administrés sur le bout du doigt, en sa double qualité de médecin et de maire.
Au fond du restaurant, quelques jeunes auteurs déjeunent et n’en finissent pas d’épiloguer sur le métier, prenant à témoin les comédiens qu’ils ont rencontrés là, s’adressant parfois aux garçons, qui connaissent le Théâtre-Français sur le bout du doigt.
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.