Word.ws English Dictionary

faux pas

/ˌfəʊ ˈpɑː//ˌfoʊ ˈpɑ/

faux pas noun: an embarrassing or tactless blunder.

Noun

faux pas (plural faux pas or faux pas's)

  1. An embarrassing or tactless blunder.
    • Now my dear Lady Teazle if you but once make a trifling Faux Pas you can't conceive how cautious you would grow, and how ready to humour and agree with your Husband.1777, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal, IV.iii
    • A saint after repentance will forgive himself for a sin; a man about town will never forgive himself for a faux pas.1906, Chesterton, Charles Dickens, chapter 2

Verb

faux pas (no third-person singular simple present, present participle faux pas'ing, simple past and past participle faux pas'ed)

  1. (nonstandard, rare) To commit a faux pas; to blunder.

faux pas meaning in Urdu, Malayalam and Vietnamese

faux pas in Urdu

آداب شکنی, لغزش پا

faux pas in Malayalam

blunder, gaffe, mistake
മര്യാദാലംഘനം, അബദ്ധം, അമളി, പ്രമാദം, കളിപ്പ്, തെറ്റ്

faux pas in Vietnamese

an embarrassing or tactless blunder
thất lễ

Examples of faux pas in a sentence

  • He was also prone to faux pas, none as memorable as his 2014 secret escapade from the Élysée.2023 June 10, Roula Khalaf, “Lunch with the FT: François Hollande”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd....
  • We could laugh at our scholastic blunders and our social faux pas's.1869, The Cornellian, volume 124, Secret Societies of Cornell University, page 353:

Synonyms of faux pas

26 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of faux pas

Forms of faux pas

Noun
pluralfaux pas
pluralfaux pas's
Verb
present participlefaux pas'ing
past participlefaux pas'ed
pastfaux pas'ed

Origin of faux pas

Unadapted borrowing from French faux pas (“faux pas, blunder; misstep, false step”).

Questions about faux pas

What does faux pas mean?
Faux pas means an embarrassing or tactless blunder.
What is faux pas in Urdu?
Faux pas in Urdu is آداب شکنی, لغزش پا. See Faux pas meaning in Urdu.
How do you use faux pas in a sentence?
He was also prone to faux pas, none as memorable as his 2014 secret escapade from the Élysée.
What part of speech is faux pas?
Faux pas can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce faux pas?
Faux pas is pronounced /ˌfəʊ ˈpɑː/ (UK).
What is the plural of faux pas?
The plural of faux pas is faux pas.

Words near faux pas in the dictionary

  1. faux bois
  2. faux Cyrillic
  3. faux frais
  4. faux gras
  5. Faux News
  6. faux pas
  7. faux queen
  8. faux queens
  9. faux-hawk
  10. faux-hawks
  11. fauxbourdon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: faux pas (page history and authors); faux pas (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); faux pas (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-faux pas.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-faux pas.wav.

Cite this entry: “faux pas.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/faux_pas. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.