pis aller

1. 1.

   an expedient adopted only in desperation

   “`pis aller' is French for `worst going'”

   Synonymslast resort

   Broaderexpedient

Questions about pis aller

What does pis aller mean?

pis aller means "an expedient adopted only in desperation".

What is another word for pis aller?

Close synonyms include last resort. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is pis aller a common word?

pis aller is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.