COMMON FRENCH WORDS
IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE
1. À gogo: In
abundance. In French this is colloquial.
2. À la carte: lit.
"on the menu"; In restaurants it refers to ordering individual dishes
rather than a fixed-price meal.
3. Abattoir: Slaughterhouse
4. Accouchement: Confinement
during childbirth; the process of having a baby; only this latter meaning
remains in French.
5. Acquis
communautaire: Used in European Union law to refer to the total body of EU
law accumulated thus far.
6. Adieu: lit.
"to God"; farewell; it carries more weight than au revoir
("goodbye," literally "until re-seeing"). It is definitive,
implying you will never see the other person again. Depending on the context,
misuse of this term can be considered as an insult, as one may wish for the
other person's death or say that you do not wish to see the other person ever
again while alive. It is used for au revoir in the south of France and to
denote a deprivation from someone or something.
7. Aide-mémoire: lit.
"memory aid"; an object or memorandum to assist in remembrance, or a
diplomatic paper proposing the major points of discussion.
8. Amateur: A
person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science in a
non-professional or unpaid manner.
9. Amour proper: "Self-love",
Self-respect.
10. Amuse-bouche or
amuse-gueule: lit. "mouth amuser"; a single, bite-sized hors
d'œuvre. In France, the exact expression used is amuse-gueule, gueule being
slang for mouth (gueule is the mouth of a carnivorous animal; when used to
describe the mouth of a human, it is vulgar), although the expression in itself
is not vulgar (see also: cul-de-sac).
11. Ancien régime:
A sociopolitical or other system that no longer exists, an allusion to
pre-revolutionary France (used with capital letters in French with this
meaning: Ancien Régime)
12. Apéritif or
aperitif: lit. "[drink] opening the appetite", a before-meal
drink.[3] In colloquial French, un apéritif is usually shortened to un apéro.
13. Appetence: 1. A natural craving or desire 2. An attraction or affinity; From
French word "Appétence", derived from "Appétit" (Appetite).
14. Après moi, le deluge:
lit. "After me, the deluge", a remark attributed to Louis XV of
France in reference to the impending end of a functioning French monarchy and
predicting the French Revolution. It is derived from Madame de Pompadour's
après nous, le déluge, "after us, the deluge". The Royal Air Force
No. 617 Squadron, famously known as the "Dambusters", uses this as
its motto.
15. Arête: A
narrow ridge. In French, also fishbone; edge of a polyhedron or graph; bridge
of the nose.
16. Armoire: A type
of cabinet; wardrobe.
17. Art nouveau: A
style of decoration and architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
It takes a capital in French (Art nouveau).
18. Attaché: A
person attached to an embassy; in French it is also the past participle of the
verb attacher (= to fasten, to tighten, to be linked)
19. Au contraire:
On the contrary.
20. Au courant: Up-to-date;
abreast of current affairs.
21. Au fait: Being
conversant in or with, or instructed in or with. In English "by the
way".
22. Au gratin: "With
gratings", anything that is grated onto a food dish. In English,
specifically 'with cheese'.
23. Au jus: lit.
"with juice", referring to a food course served with sauce. Often
redundantly formulated, as in 'Open-faced steak sandwich, served with au jus.' No
longer used in French, except for the slang être au jus (to be informed).
24. Au pair: A
young foreigner who does domestic chores in exchange for room and board. In
France, those chores are mainly child care/education.
25. Au revoir!: "See
you later!" In French a contraction of Au plaisir de vous revoir (to the
pleasure of seeing you again).
26. Avant-garde (pl. avant-gardes): applied
to cutting-edge or radically innovative movements in art, music and literature;
figuratively "on the edge," literally, a military term, meaning
"vanguard" (which is a corruption of avant-garde) or "advance
guard," in other words, "first to attack" (antonym of
arrière-garde).
27. Avant la letter: Used to describe
something or someone seen as a forerunner of something (such as an artistic or
political movement) before that something was recognized and named, e.g.,
"a post-modernist avant la lettre," "a feminist avant la
lettre." The expression literally means before the letter, i.e.,
"before it had a name." The French modern form of this expression is
"avant l'heure".
28. Avoirdupois: Used in Middle English,
avoir de pois = commodities sold by weight, alteration of Old French aveir de
peis = goods of weight.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_words_and_phrases_used_by_English_speakers
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