Words from French

Family

French grew out of Vulgar Latin.

The words, A to Z

• abattoir

  A place named plainly for the act it exists to perform.

• acid

  Something sharp on the tongue once just meant 'to be sour' in Latin.

• adroit

  Being skillful, this word suggests, is really just a matter of being pointed the right way.

• altruism

  A word built entirely out of the idea of 'someone else.'

• ampere

  This unit of electrical current carries a scientist's name with every measurement.

• antibiotic

  A word built to describe something waging war on life itself — just the wrong kind.

• arid

  This word for parched land grew out of a verb that simply meant 'to be dry.'

• attitude

  The way you hold your body and the way you hold your opinions turn out to share a single root.

• baguette

  That long, crusty loaf owes its name to something far less edible: a simple stick.

• bandage

  A strip of cloth carries a strip of grammar wrapped inside it.

• begonia

  This flower's name is really a thank-you note to a 17th-century French official.

• bias

  Before it meant a leaning of the mind, it meant a leaning of the ground.

• bicycle

  A machine named simply for its shape: two circles, borrowed straight from French.

• boulevard

  A wide, tree-lined street was once, quite literally, a fortress wall.

• bourbon

  A whiskey named for a place named for a dynasty named for a god of bubbling water.

• braille

  This word for touch-readable dots carries the name of the man who invented them, even in the way English mispronounces it.

• bravado

  A swagger that traces straight back to bragging out loud.

• buccaneer

  A pirate's name once meant nothing more sinister than a guy who liked his meat smoked.

• bullion

  Before it meant gold bars, this word may have described something bubbling away in a pot.

• bureaucracy

  The word for red tape actually starts with a reddish cloth on a desk.

• cabaret

  A word for late-night entertainment that started out describing something much smaller and plainer: a room.

• cabinet

  A small room's name grew up to run a country.

• cadre

  A small, structured group started out as nothing more than a picture frame.

• cafeteria

  This word for a self-serve dining hall started life as a place to grab a cup of coffee.

• camaraderie

  There's a reason this word sounds like it's got a comrade hiding inside it.

• campaign

  Before it meant elections or ads, this word simply meant heading out to open ground.

• carbon

  The chemist who named this element was borrowing a word people had used for charred wood since Roman times.

• caribou

  This snow-loving deer carries a name that literally describes what its hooves do in winter.

• carousel

  The spinning fairground ride carries a name whose own path to English is a bit of a spin itself.

• cartel

  A word for cutthroat business alliances once meant a formal note passed between rivals before a duel.

• cartilage

  The bendy stuff in your ears and nose has a name that quietly pushed out an old English word for it.

• cascade

  A word that tumbles from the same root as falling itself.

• celery

  This crunchy stalk carried its name all the way from ancient Greece before finally settling into English.

• chandelier

  This glittering fixture traces back to a single small flame.

• chemistry

  The science of matter's transformations was named after a word for pouring liquids.

• cinema

  The word for the movies is literally 'writing movement' — a name coined for a machine, not a place.

• citadel

  A fortress that's technically just a small city playing dress-up.

• cologne

  This fragrant word is really just a shortened trip to a German city, by way of French water.

• connoisseur

  Someone who truly knows what they're looking at once just meant, literally, 'one who knows.'

• corduroy

  This ribbed fabric's name sounds royal, but that story is likely just a beautiful myth.

• corridor

  A hallway's name once described what you did in it, not what it looked like.

• cosmetic

  The word for making a face beautiful comes from the same root as the word for the entire ordered universe.

• costume

  The outfit you wear once a year began life as a word for everyday habit.

• coup

  A single word for one sharp, decisive strike — political or otherwise.

• critique

  A word that came to English fully dressed, borrowed straight from French rather than reshaped along the way.

• croissant

  That crescent-shaped pastry is literally named for the act of growing.

• crouton

  That crunchy little cube on your salad came to English fully dressed, straight from French, no translation required.

• culvert

  This word for a drain tunnel under a road has a history that's as buried as the pipes themselves.

• debris

  The scattered leftovers of something that used to hold together.

• debut

  A first appearance on stage traces back to the simple act of aiming for a target.

• delicatessen

  A word that started out meaning fine food itself, then quietly became the name of the shop that sells it.

• discount

  Taking money off a price is, at its root, a kind of counting backward.

• encore

  When a crowd shouts this at the end of a show, they're actually just saying one small word in French for 'again.'

• enigmatic

  Some words are built to keep a secret, and this one wears that secret right in its bones.

• ennui

  A word for boredom so deep it borders on being hated by life itself.

• entrepreneur

  The person who takes something on is baked right into this word's bones.

• epidemic

  Something that spreads not just through bodies, but through a whole population at once.

• epilepsy

  This word for a seizure disorder literally means being 'taken hold of.'

• escargot

  A dish whose name simply came along with the French plate it arrived on.

• espionage

  The word for spying got its hissing first sound back after centuries of staying quiet.

• fabric

  The cloth on your table and the workshop where it was made share the same ancestor.

• facade

  The word for a building's front comes from the same root as the word for your own front.

• fiasco

  A total flop, once upon a time, was just a bottle waiting to be bought.

• flotilla

  Sometimes a fleet needs a nickname that makes it sound smaller and friendlier than it is.

• flour

  The powder in your bread was once literally called the 'flower' of the wheat.

• gadget

  A small clever contraption whose own name refuses to explain itself.

• gangrene

  A word that traveled from ancient Greek straight into the body, without much softening along the way.

• gauze

  A fabric so thin it seems to remember the word for the fiber it once was.

• genteel

  A word for polished manners that once simply meant belonging to the right family.

• ghoul

  This word for a grave-robbing demon traveled through three languages before it started haunting English.

• gingham

  That checkered picnic-blanket fabric might get its name from a town, or from a word meaning 'apart.'

• glucose

  The sugar in your blood shares its root with the sweetness of new wine.

• gyroscope

  A spinning wheel that keeps watch on its own balance, named by a Frenchman who fused two Greek ideas into one machine.

• jackal

  This scavenging canine carried its name across four languages before slipping into English.

• jeans

  A wardrobe staple named after an Italian port city, hiding in plain sight.

• jockey

  Behind every racehorse's rider is a name that once just meant 'that guy.'

• kaput

  This word for 'broken beyond repair' actually started out as a losing hand of cards.

• lagoon

  A word for calm water that traveled through three languages before settling into English.

• legislature

  The body that makes laws borrows its name from the person who makes them.

• lemonade

  A word that traveled from a citrus grove all the way through the grammar of French suffixes before landing in your summer glass.

• leotard

  This snug garment is basically wearing a Frenchman's name.

• lilac

  This pale purple flower's name traces all the way back to a word for the color blue.

• limousine

  This sleek word for a long, chauffeured car actually started out naming a rustic region of France.

• macaroni

  A tube of pasta once carried the swagger of a fool, a saint, and a dandy all at once.

• magenta

  A vivid pink-red owes its name to a battlefield, not a flower or a fruit.

• marathon

  A grueling 26-mile race is named after a plant that just happened to grow near a battlefield.

• margarine

  A butter substitute that owes its name not to fat, but to a pearl.

• mascot

  The lucky charm at your team's side once summoned darker forces than good luck.

• menagerie

  A collection of exotic animals kept for display owes its name to something as ordinary as running a household.

• mentor

  A trusted guide's name comes straight from a character in Homer's Odyssey.

• mercantile

  A word that carries the busy hum of traders and their goods wherever it goes.

• milieu

  The place you belong is baked right into the word for it.

• millimeter

  A thousandth of something can still get its own name.

• minuet

  A courtly dance whose very name whispers that its steps are small.

• morale

  A word for collective spirit that started out meaning something closer to right and wrong.

• mummy

  One little word hides two completely unrelated stories — one about preserved bodies, the other about the first word many of us ever say.

• munition

  The word for war supplies once meant nothing more than the act of putting up a wall.

• muslin

  This lightweight cotton cloth carries the name of a city on the Tigris.

• nicotine

  This word carries a diplomat's name inside every cigarette.

• nitrogen

  This invisible gas that fills most of the air around you was named by a French chemist in the middle of the revolution's scientific fervor.

• obesity

  This word carries its own meaning right in its bones — it literally means 'having eaten to fullness.'

• oboe

  This woodwind's name is a mishearing of its own description.

• ocelot

  This wild cat's name got its spots reshuffled by a French naturalist's pen.

• oleander

  A flowering shrub whose name may have quietly swapped places with another word entirely.

• omelette

  A folded egg dish that arrived in English kitchens with its French name still clinging to it.

• palette

  The board an artist mixes colors on shares a secret twin hiding in plain sight.

• panda

  The animal's name may have started as a word for a kind of bamboo, not the creature itself.

• pantaloon

  A pair of trousers that started out as one man's stage costume.

• partisan

  Before it meant someone loyal to a cause, it just meant someone who belonged to one.

• passport

  This travel document's name is really just a permission slip to move through a gate.

• pasteurize

  This word carries a scientist's name inside it, turned into an everyday kitchen action.

• pastiche

  A work that borrows so many flavors from other styles it becomes its own dish.

• pecan

  This nut's name once meant simply 'nut' in a language that had no need to specify which kind.

• picnic

  This word for an outdoor meal crossed the Channel before it ever touched a checkered blanket.

• platoon

  A military unit whose name once meant something as small and round as a ball.

• potpourri

  That bowl of fragrant dried petals shares a name with a rotten pot of stew.

• praline

  This sugary treat kept its French name when it crossed into English.

• prolific

  A word literally built to describe making offspring — before it ever described a novelist's output.

• pyramid

  Even scholars can't agree whether this word came from wheat, reaping, or an ancient Egyptian phrase for 'height.'

• quiche

  A savory egg pie that shares a family tree with cake, and, thanks to a sitcom, once meant something else entirely.

• quintet

  Five voices, one small Italian word for 'fifth' hiding underneath them.

• radar

  This word started life as a military abbreviation so practical it forgot it was ever spelled out.

• repertoire

  The list of things you can already do is older than you think — it started as a filing system.

• ricochet

  Some words bounce into English without ever telling us where they came from first.

• rouge

  A dab of color with a French accent, borrowed twice before it stuck.

• sabotage

  This word for deliberate wreckage came to English straight from French, unchanged.

• sadism

  This word carries the name of a real, notorious man inside it.

• salvo

  A burst of gunfire once carried an echo of an old Roman greeting.

• sardine

  A tiny fish that may carry the name of an ancient Lydian city inside it.

• sardonic

  A smile that hints at scorn traces back to a plant said to twist the face of anyone who tasted it.

• satin

  This glossy fabric is named after a city, not a texture.

• saxophone

  This instrument is literally named after the man who built it, with 'sound' tacked on the end.

• silhouette

  A finance minister's brief, thrifty term in office left its mark as the shape we use for outlines filled in black.

• stethoscope

  A doctor's listening instrument owes its name to the very person who invented it.

• suede

  That soft, brushed leather owes its name to a country, not a texture.

• symbol

  A symbol was once literally a matching piece, thrown together to prove two halves belonged.

• tabby

  A striped cat's name traces back to a neighborhood in Baghdad famous for silk.

• tambourine

  This jingly instrument's name shrank its way into English from a much bigger word for drum.

• tangerine

  This little citrus fruit is named after a city on the coast of Morocco.

• telephone

  A device named by joining 'far' and 'sound' — the plainest possible description of what it does.

• tendon

  The cord that lets your muscles pull on your bones got its name from a mix-up between two similar-sounding Greek and Latin words for stretching.

• terrace

  A flat step carved into land takes its name from the ground itself.

• timbre

  The quality that lets you tell a violin from a flute even when they play the exact same note traces back to something you'd hit, not hear.

• titanic

  A word that sounds like myth but was actually born in a chemistry lab.

• trapeze

  The circus swing owes its name to a shape, not a sport.

• trousseau

  A bride's collected belongings once had a name that literally meant 'little bundle.'

• tuba

  The deepest voice in the brass section once meant any kind of trumpet at all.

• turbine

  Inside every spinning engine lurks the memory of a storm.

• vaccine

  The word we trust to protect us actually starts out on a farm, tucked inside a cow.

• vandal

  A word that turned a whole people into a synonym for destruction, thanks partly to one poet's grudge.

• volley

  A word that arcs through the air before it ever lands on the ground.