you don’t say

/\ju ˌdoʊnt ˈseɪ\/ intj

The verdict

“you don’t say” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as an interjection — the kind of word writers most often double-check.

Unranked
below top-frequency French
13
letters

Dominant Wiktionary sense: Vraiment ? Sérieusement ? Pas possible ! Sans blague ? Note d’usage : Parfois ironique après une affirmation jugée évidente.

Key facts for you don’t say
PropertyValue
Headwordyou don’t say
LanguageFrench
Part of speechInterjection
IPA\ju ˌdoʊnt ˈseɪ\
Letters13
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Where “you don’t say” sits in French frequency

you don’t say falls outside the top-100,000 ranked French words — the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for you don’t say is 13 letters long, classified as an interjection, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ju ˌdoʊnt ˈseɪ\. 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: "Vraiment ? Sérieusement ? Pas possible ! Sans blague ? Note d’usage : Parfois ironique après une affirmation jugée évidente.".

No misspelling variants are generated for you don’t say 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 you don’t say, spelled Y-O-U- -D-O-N-’-T- -S-A-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Vraiment ? Sérieusement ? Pas possible ! Sans blague ? Note d’usage : Parfois ironique après une affirmation jugée évidente.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "you don’t say"?
"you don’t say" is spelled Y-O-U- -D-O-N-’-T- -S-A-Y. The IPA pronunciation is \ju ˌdoʊnt ˈseɪ\.
What does "you don’t say" mean?
As an interjection, "you don’t say" means: Vraiment ? Sérieusement ? Pas possible ! Sans blague ? Note d’usage : Parfois ironique après une affirmation jugée évidente.
How do you pronounce "you don’t say"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "you don’t say" is \ju ˌdoʊnt ˈseɪ\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "you don’t say" come from?
"you don’t say" 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.

Using “you don’t say”

The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.

  • The one correct French spelling is Y-O-U- -D-O-N-’-T- -S-A-Y — every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
  • Say it as \ju ˌdoʊnt ˈseɪ\ (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 Y in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.