valer la pena
The verdict
“valer la pena” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as a verb - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 13
- letters
Dominant Wiktionary sense: Valoir la peine, mériter que l’on fasse des efforts.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | valer la pena |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \ˈβa.le la ˈpeno̯\ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “valer la pena” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for valer la pena is 13 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ˈβa.le la ˈpeno̯\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Valoir la peine, mériter que l’on fasse des efforts.".
No misspelling variants are generated for valer la pena in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. 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 valer la pena, spelled V-A-L-E-R- -L-A- -P-E-N-A, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Valoir la peine, mériter que l’on fasse des efforts.
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.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “valer la pena, French word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/fr/mot/valer-la-pena
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "valer la pena"?
What does "valer la pena" mean?
How do you pronounce "valer la pena"?
What language does "valer la pena" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “valer la pena”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is V-A-L-E-R- -L-A- -P-E-N-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ˈβa.le la ˈpeno̯\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter V in our French index: