Food in French: order, eat and chat with confidence

Food in French is la nourriture [1][2]. This page gives you the French words about food that come up at every table: bread, cheese, drinks and the names of the meals. You can hear each one, then play a short quiz. For more starter vocabulary, see basic French words and common French phrases. Meal names differ in Québec, and the block near the end covers that.

What is the French word for food?

The French word for food is la nourriture. Larousse’s English-French entry for “nutriment” gives [food] as nourriture, feminine [1]. Larousse’s French dictionary lists close synonyms: alimentation, mets, vivres and repas [2]. Say la nourriture for food in general.

Learn the article with the noun. French nouns are masculine or feminine, so le pain and la pomme each carry their gender. That advice is a general observation, not a dictionary finding.

For one sitting, use un repas. Larousse defines it as the portion of food taken at one time at a regular rhythm, and gives the example “Sauter un repas”, to skip a meal [3]. Hear le repas.

What are the French words about food?

Here are French words about food, with a recording where we have one. The article is included so you learn the gender. You can also hear le poisson, le poulet, la soupe, le gâteau and le chocolat.

Bread has more than one word around it. Larousse’s entry for pain lists pain grillé (toast), pain de mie (sandwich bread), pain de seigle (rye bread) and pain perdu (French toast) [4]. It also lists pain au chocolat as a chocolate-filled roll [4]. Say le pain for the basic word.

How do you say the meals in French?

Meal names shift by country, and the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) describes the two series in use. One runs petit-déjeuner, déjeuner, dîner [7]. The other runs déjeuner, dîner, souper [7]. The OQLF defines déjeuner as the morning meal, usually the first of the day [7].

For the midday meal, the OQLF says France generally uses déjeuner, although dîner is also used in some regions [8]. For the evening meal, it says dîner is the standard term in France, while souper is the traditional one in several regions [9]. Hear le déjeuner and le dîner, and note that they can name different meals depending on where you are.

What is cheese in French?

Cheese in French is le fromage, a masculine noun [5]. Larousse’s examples show the pattern: un fromage is a cheese, du fromage is cheese in general, and plusieurs sortes de fromages is several kinds of cheese [5]. Hear le fromage.

All six come from the Larousse entry for fromage [5]. The same entry lists the idiom en faire tout un fromage, to make a mountain out of a molehill [5]. It has nothing to do with cheese on the plate.

What are French drinks in French?

The general word is la boisson. Larousse defines it as “tout liquide que l’on boit”, any liquid you drink [6]. Hear la boisson. The verb is boire, to drink.

Larousse’s encyclopedia links on that page describe a few of them. La bière is a fermented drink made from germinated cereals, mainly barley [6]. Le vin is a fermented drink made from grapes or grape juice [6]. Le lait is a white, opaque liquid with a slightly sweet taste [6]. Le jus is a liquid extracted from the pulp of certain fruits [6].

L’eau and le vin have no recording yet.

Common mistakes

• Dropping the article. Learn le pain, not pain alone, so you remember the gender. That is a general observation.
• Using nourriture for a single meal. Larousse defines repas as the food taken at one time [3]. Nourriture is food in general [1].
• Assuming déjeuner always means lunch. The OQLF defines it as the morning meal [7], and notes that France uses it for the midday meal [8].
• Saying breuvage in Québec. The OQLF says breuvage stays in use there under the influence of English “beverage”, and lists boisson as the preferred term [10].
• 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 for travel.

See also: places in town in French.

See also: animals in French.

Sources