tenir ferme

/\tə.niʁ fɛʁm\/ verb

Letters

11 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

tenir ferme is aFrenchverb. It means: Résister ; ne pas céder ; se défendre. Pronounced \tə.niʁ fɛʁm\.

Key facts for tenir ferme
PropertyValue
Headwordtenir ferme
LanguageFrench
Part of speechVerb
IPA\tə.niʁ fɛʁm\
Letters11
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

tenir ferme is not present in the top-100,000 ranked French corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for tenir ferme is 11 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \tə.niʁ fɛʁm\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for tenir ferme in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable French patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

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. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is tenir ferme, spelled T-E-N-I-R- -F-E-R-M-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Résister ; ne pas céder ; se défendre.
  2. 2
    Ne pas renoncer à, ne pas abandonner.
  3. 3
    Se tenir solidement

Synonyms

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "tenir ferme"?
"tenir ferme" is spelled T-E-N-I-R- -F-E-R-M-E. The IPA pronunciation is \tə.niʁ fɛʁm\.
What does "tenir ferme" mean?
As a verb, "tenir ferme" means: Résister ; ne pas céder ; se défendre.
How do you pronounce "tenir ferme"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "tenir ferme" is \tə.niʁ fɛʁm\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "tenir ferme" come from?
"tenir ferme" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter T in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.