Word.ws English Dictionary

comme il faut

UK/ˌkʌmiːlˈfəʊ/US/ˌkʌmilˈfoʊ/

comme il faut adjective: proper; in keeping with etiquette or social standards.

Adjective

comme il faut (comparative more comme il faut, superlative most comme il faut)

  1. Proper; in keeping with etiquette or social standards.
    • "Georgiana, put on your blue muslin, and ask Fanchette to make your hair a little comme-il-faut; and pray try to look well and cheerful; you were not up late, and ought to appear the better for it."1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXIII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 296
    • 2007: Talking during performances is perfectly comme il faut in Wharton – why else go to a show if not to talk to one’s friends? – so while Miss Shaw, up to her bosom in dirt, went on about existence, I asked my female companion for advice. — Deborah Friedell, ‘Short Cuts’, London Review of Books...

Forms of comme il faut

comparativemore comme il faut
superlativemost comme il faut

Origin of comme il faut

Borrowed from French comme il faut (literally “as is necessary, as must be”).

Questions about comme il faut

What does comme il faut mean?
Comme il faut means proper; in keeping with etiquette or social standards.
What part of speech is comme il faut?
Comme il faut is an adjective.
How do you pronounce comme il faut?
Comme il faut is pronounced /ˌkʌmilˈfoʊ/ (US).

Words near comme il faut in the dictionary

  1. commaundment
  2. commaundments
  3. commaunds
  4. Commc'n
  5. comme ci comme ça
  6. comme il faut
  7. comme moi
  8. commeasurable
  9. commeasurate
  10. commeasure
  11. commeasured

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: comme il faut (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “comme il faut.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/comme_il_faut. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.