vouvoyer
\vu.vwa.je\
The verdict
“vouvoyer” is uncommon French (frequency #82,580 among 2,061 “V” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #82,580
- frequency rank, French
- 2,061
- “V” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - S’adresser à une personne en employant vous au lieu de tu.
Corpus desk
Index FR-vouvoyer · vouvoyer · French
vouvoyer · rank #82,580 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #82,580
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,061
- PHOTO-FINISH volute
Nearest frequency peer: volute (-1 rank slots)
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.
Rangs de longue queue près de « vouvoyer »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- Volterra
Volterra
17,424 corpus weight
- volubilis
volubilis
17,423 corpus weight
- volute
volute
17,422 corpus weight
- vouvoyer
vouvoyer
17,421 corpus weight
- wam
wam
17,419 corpus weight
- Weser
Weser
17,418 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « vouvoyer » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | vouvoyer |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \vu.vwa.je\ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #82,580 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « vouvoyer » en français
Rare enough to double-check
vouvoyer is uncommon French at frequency #82,580 among 2,061 “V” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed \vu.vwa.je\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "S’adresser à une personne en employant vous au lieu de tu.".
Zero misspellings are on record for vouvoyer in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct French form is vouvoyer, spelled V-O-U-V-O-Y-E-R.
Definition
- 1S’adresser à une personne en employant vous au lieu de tu.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how vouvoyer appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Tu veux une cigarette ? me dit-il changeant brusquement de tactique. Non, je ne fume pas et je vous demande de me vouvoyer.
Ordinairement, mon père me vouvoyait, comme ses autres enfants, dont il entendait qu’ils en usassent de même avec lui.
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); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "vouvoyer", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).