Animal French words: pets, farm and wild animals

Animal French words come with a gender, so learn each one with its article: un chien, une vache, un loup. This page covers pets, farm animals and wild animals, the plural animaux and a few sayings, and you can hear many of the words. For more starter words, see basic French words. For how gender works, see French articles and noun gender. For another word set with audio, see food in French.

How do you say animals in French?

Animals in French is les animaux, and one animal in French is un animal [1][2]. Larousse lists animal as a masculine noun [1]. Its junior dictionary gives the masculine plural of animal as animaux [2]. That is how animals in the French language are written in the plural, and cheval becomes chevaux the same way [3].

Larousse’s examples under animal are animal sauvage (wild animal) and animal domestique (domestic animal), and it lists animal de compagnie among its phrases [1].

What are the French words for pets?

Start with the dog, the cat and the rabbit. Hear le chien, le chat and le lapin.

Larousse lists chien as a masculine noun and chienne as the feminine noun for the female dog [4]. It does the same for chat and chatte, the female cat [5]. For lapin the female is lapine [6].

What are the French words for farm animals?

French words for animals on a farm include the horse, the cow and the hen. Hear le cheval, la vache and la poule.

Larousse lists cheval as a masculine noun with the plural chevaux [3]. Its bilingual dictionary gives vache as a feminine noun and translates it as “cow” [9]. It lists poule as a feminine noun, the female of the domestic fowl, and notes that the male is le coq [7]. Hear le coq.

What are the French words for wild animals?

Wild animals in French start with the wolf, the squirrel and, in Canada, the moose. Larousse’s bilingual dictionary gives loup as a masculine noun meaning “wolf” [10]. Larousse defines écureuil as a masculine noun, a small tree-dwelling rodent with a long bushy tail [8]. Hear le loup.

Écureuil has no recording yet.

Are French animal names masculine or feminine?

Each French animal name has a fixed gender, and a few have a separate word for the female. Larousse lists un chien and une chienne, un chat and une chatte, and un lapin and une lapine as pairs [4][5][6]. Other names have one form only. Larousse lists écureuil as masculine and shows no separate feminine word for it [8].

The gender belongs to the word, not to the animal in front of you. That is a general observation, and it is why the article goes on every word in the tables above. The full rules are in French articles and noun gender.

What are some French animal sayings?

Larousse lists these French animal sayings and their meanings:

• donner sa langue au chat: to give up guessing [5]
• appeler un chat un chat: to say things as they are [5]
• poser un lapin à quelqu’un: to miss a promised meeting, a popular expression [6]
• poule mouillée: a person without courage, familiar [7]
• se coucher avec les poules: to go to bed very early [7]
• monter sur ses grands chevaux: to lose one’s temper [3]
• un cheval de Troie: something that lets you slip into a place and take control [3]
• quand on parle du loup on en voit la queue: talk of the devil [10]
• parler français comme une vache espagnole: to murder the French language, familiar [9]

Hear le loup again when you meet that one.

Common mistakes

• Saying “des animals”. The plural is animaux, as Larousse’s junior dictionary shows [2]. Larousse gives chevaux for cheval [3].
• Dropping the article. Learn le chien, not chien alone, so you remember the gender. That is a general observation.
• Reading a saying word for word. Donner sa langue au chat is not about a cat’s tongue; Larousse glosses it as admitting you cannot guess [5].
• Using chienne for any dog. Larousse defines chienne as the female of the dog [4]. The general word is chien.
• Relying on a vocabulary page from a blog, including this one. Dictionary entries change between editions. Compare each entry’s date with the date at the top of this page.

See also: French plural.

Sources