french
Verbfrenches, frenching, frenched
Formsfrenches, frenching, frenched
- 1The language of France, also spoken in neighboring Belgium, Monaco, and Switzerland and in former French colonies around the world.
Her grandparents grew up in Quebec and still speak French at home.
The instructions on the box were printed in English, French, and Spanish.
Note
The name goes back to Old English Frencisc, "of the Franks", and the Franks are linked to Old English franca, a javelin, from the spears they carried. English has long had its own corner of the language: Thomas More's The Debellacyon of Salem & Bizance (1533) speaks of "such french as is peculiare to the lawys of this realme", the French of English law.
- 2Belonging to or connected with the country of France.
The French government announced new rules for electric cars on Tuesday.
Our train crossed the French border near Geneva late in the evening.
- 3Relating to the people of France or to their culture and way of life.
The novel offers a warm portrait of French village life after the war.
Their wedding mixed French and Moroccan traditions, from the food to the music.
- 4The people of France as a whole, or a group of people from France.
Polls suggest the French are divided over the new pension law.
In the war film, the British and the French defend the bridge together.
Note
The nation as a whole takes the and a plural verb: the French are divided, the English and the French. Without the, it follows a word of quantity, as in more and more French unionized. Thomas Urquhart's 1653 translation of Rabelais even writes the frenches; for one person, English says a French person, a Frenchman or a Frenchwoman.
- 5Relating to the French language, such as its words, sounds, or grammar.
French spelling keeps many letters that are no longer pronounced.
She checked every French verb ending twice before handing in the translation.
- 6A particular person's ability to communicate in the French language.
Her French improved quickly after a semester in Lyon.
His French was just good enough to argue with the taxi driver in Marseille.
Note
The language becomes personal property here, usually with a possessive: my French is rusty, her French improved. It takes words of skill and can praise as well as apologize: R. West, writing to Thomas Gray in 1742, says Racine's French is reckoned a standard, the language of the times at its purest.
- 7The French language and its literature as a subject of study.
She majored in French and spent her junior year in Paris.
The school dropped French from its course list and added Mandarin.
- 8A polite, and now often joking, word for swearing or vulgar language.
Pardon my French, but that was a damn stupid call by the referee.
The memo was all synergies and paradigm shifts, if you'll pardon my French.
Note
The polite cover lives mainly in one phrase, pardon my French, said just before or just after the rude word. Older English could call swearing bad French, as Edward Jerningham Wakefield's Adventure in New Zealand (1845) does. The apology is now often a joke, tacked onto words that are not rude at all, such as academic jargon.
- 9To kiss someone, or kiss each other, while putting one's tongue into the other person's mouth.
At the end of the film, he finally frenched the girl he had liked all summer.
She dared him to french his date in front of the whole table.
Note
Here the verb is French kiss cut short, and it is usually written lowercase. It works with an object, as in Wanda Coleman's "Tom frenched her full in the mouth" from A War of Eyes and Other Stories (1988), and without one, when two people french. The French in it is the same one as in the adjective for a fancy style.
- 10To prepare food for cooking or serving by cutting it into strips.
Trim the ends of the green beans, then french them before steaming.
The cook frenched a pile of zucchini for the stir-fry.
Similarjulienne
Note
Two kitchen verbs share this spelling, and the food tells them apart: frenched beans or potatoes have been cut into strips, while frenched lamb chops have had their bones scraped clean, which is the butcher's trim. Both are usually written lowercase in recipes, unlike the French of the country.
- 11To remove the fat and meat covering a bone so the bare bone shows for a stylish look, as on a rack of lamb or bone-in rib-eye.
Ask the butcher to french the rack of lamb so the rib bones are clean.
The chef frenched each bone-in rib-eye before searing it.
Note
Menus use the participle: a frenched rack of lamb, a frenched rib-eye. The full name is French trimming, and the trim is mainly for looks, leaving clean bone standing clear of the meat, though the bare bone also gives a chop a handle.
- 12Used in names and phrases that refer to an unconventional or fancy style of making or doing something.
The draftsman traced the smooth arc with a French curve.
For the gala he chose a dress shirt with French cuffs and silver cufflinks.
- 13A person from France, in the English of non-native speakers.
"My husband is a French, from near Lyon," she explained in careful English.
In his first English essay, the exchange student wrote that his best friend was a French who loved soccer.
Note
Native speakers do not count the word this way; a French and two Frenches mark English as a second language, and the usual fix is an adjective with a noun: a French woman, two French students. The bare noun is kept for the nation as a whole.
- 14Used informally, and often as a euphemism, in names and references for venereal diseases.
The ship's surgeon dosed two sailors with mercury for the French pox.
His letters from the front hint that he was suffering from the French disease.
Note
Only in fixed names does French carry this sense: French pox, French disease, French crown. They let a speaker point at venereal disease without naming it, laying it at a neighboring nation's door in the process. Careful or medical writing uses the disease's own name instead.
- 15Relating to oral sex, especially fellatio.
She was a tall redhead, with a shape that would make you jump for joy and a reputation as the best French girl in the place.
1946, Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, Bernard WolfeNote
The adjective works in fixed pairings, French girl and French active, where it marks oral sex as a specialty or a preference; Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe's Really the Blues (1946) describes a woman with a reputation as the best French girl in the place. Without that shared code a listener hears plain nationality, so the slang only works where both sides know it.
- 16Oral sex, especially fellatio.
The detective found a price list in the escort's purse that charged extra for French.
‘French’—still used by prostitutes as a term for oral sex.
1996, ObserverNote
The sex trade used it as a menu word, listed and priced beside Greek and straight sex: have French, or, in Henry Nathaniel Cary's The Slang of Venery (1916), do the French. The Observer in 1996 reported prostitutes still using it, but in ordinary speech it now sounds dated.
- 17Short for French vermouth, a dry vermouth.
She asked the bartender for a gin and French with a twist of lemon.
He was drinking double gins with single Frenches in them.
1967, Michael Francis Gilbert, The Dust & the HeatNote
Bar orders are where it lives: gin and French, or gin-and-French as Ethel Mannin writes it in Confessions & Impressions (1930). Counted by the serving it takes a plural, so Michael Gilbert's The Dust & the Heat (1967) has a drinker taking double gins with single Frenches. It is dated now; a modern bartender expects dry vermouth.
- 18A family name that began as a word for a French person.
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Origins
Inherited from Middle English Frenche, from Old English Frenċisċ ("Frankish, French"), from Proto-West Germanic *Frankisk, equivalent to Frank + -ish; compare Danish and Swedish fransk ("French"). The use for swear words comes from expressions such as pardon my French in the early 19th century, and the use for vermouth is short for French vermouth, usually drier than Italian vermouth.
From the adjective French (from Old English Frencisc, "Frankish, French"), after French ways of cutting and trimming food and after the French kiss.