Random French Word Generator

The Random French Word Generator draws one to ten words from a list of 2,528 and shows each with its English meaning: chien — dog, travailler — to work, nénuphar — water lily. You can draw from the whole list or from a category, either by word length or by character (pretty, fancy, weird or nature words). It is a vocabulary drill for learners and a quick source of real French words for names, titles and prompts.

Settings

Choose how many words you want, from 1 to 10, and a category. With Random selected the draw comes from all 2,528 words. The other options restrict it:

• 3-letter words (100): bas — low, bal — ball (dance), tir — shooting.
• 4-letter words (81): nord — north, noix — nut, soif — thirst, coup — blow.
• 6-letter words (267) and 7-letter words (89): abandon — abandonment, laurier — laurel.
• Fancy French words (211): Latinate, formal vocabulary such as aberration, abondance, abyssal, académique.
• Pretty French words (173): words chosen for sound and sense, such as douceur — softness, ravissant — delightful, utopie, nénuphar.
• Weird French words (173): oddities and false friends, such as abracadabrantesque — preposterous, ululer — to ululate, quérulent — complaining, débroussailler — to clear brushwood.
• French nature words (218): abeille — bee, cigale — cicada, faon — fawn, héron — heron, nuage — cloud.

The remaining 1,319 words carry no category and are basic everyday vocabulary: bonjour, amour, famille, manger, boire, école, maison, voiture, and so on. They only appear when the category is set to Random. Within one draw no word repeats; across draws it can.

What a card shows and what it leaves out

Each card has the French word and one line of English. The meaning is short, sometimes with a gloss in parentheses, as in "kiwi (both the bird and the fruit)" or "gamin — little boy, often implies mischief". The card does not show the word's gender, its pronunciation, an example sentence or its part of speech, though you can usually infer the last from the meaning: an entry glossed "to eat" is a verb in the infinitive, and one glossed "low" is an adjective in its masculine singular form.

One display quirk: the shared word card capitalizes the first letter of every word in both lines, so chien appears as "Chien" and "to eat" as "To Eat". French nouns and adjectives are written in lower case in ordinary text.

A few things to know about French words

Gender. Every French noun is masculine or feminine, and the article changes with it: le chien, la maison, l'école. The generator does not show gender, so look it up before using a word in a sentence. A rough guide: nouns ending in -e are more often feminine (famille, voiture), and nouns ending in -age, -eau and -ment are usually masculine (nuage, abandon), but there are many exceptions.

Accents. Marks like é, è, ê, ç and ï are part of the spelling, not decoration: école, forêt, rivière, nénuphar. They change pronunciation and sometimes meaning. If you copy a word into a search, keep the accent.

Verbs. Verbs are listed in the infinitive (manger, boire, travailler, jauger). French infinitives end in -er, -ir or -re; the -er group is the largest and the most regular, which is why beginners meet it first.

False friends. Some words look English but are not: coup means a blow or a stroke, not a coup d'état on its own; gamin is a kid, not a game. The Weird category collects several of these.

Ways to use it

• Daily vocabulary. Draw ten, write each in a sentence, check gender and pronunciation in a dictionary. The 3- and 4-letter lists are good for absolute beginners.
• Word games. The length filters suit crosswords and Wordle-style games; the 6-letter list is the largest at 267 words.
• Names for brands, characters and pets. The Pretty and Fancy lists are the ones to use here: douceur, ravissant, utopie.
• Comparing languages. The same drill exists for Spanish, Latin, German, Dutch and Japanese. Drawing a French word next to its Latin ancestor is a good way to see where it came from.

See all word & language generators for the full set, or let the Random Language Generator choose a language for you.