List of French words of Germanic origin

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This is a list of

Germanic language of any period, whether incorporated in the formation of the French language
or borrowed at any time thereafter.

Historical background

French is a Romance language descended primarily from the Gallo-Roman language, a form of Vulgar Latin, spoken in the late Roman Empire by the Gauls and more specifically the Belgae. However, northern Gaul from the Rhine southward to the Loire starting in the 3rd century was gradually co-populated by a Germanic confederacy, the Franks, culminating after the departure of the Roman administration in a re-unification by the first Christian king of the Franks, Clovis I, in AD 486. From the name of his domain, Francia (which covered northern France, the lowlands and much of Germany), comes the modern name, France. For a few centuries, sizeable minorities of Frankish speaking peasants held on to their native language, but in northern France they shifted to their own dialect of Gallo-Roman.[1]

The first Franks spoke

Old Franconian, which later evolved into Old Dutch. The Franks in northern Gaul adopted their own version of Gallo-Roman, which became French.[2]
France emerged after the heirs of Charlemagne divided the empire along linguistic lines.

In France, Frankish continued to be spoken among the kings and nobility until the time of the

superstratum language
over the existing Proto-Romance language spoken by the populace.

The development of French

As a result of over 500 years of Germano-Latin

langue d'oc).[4]

Although approximately ten percent of Modern French words are derived from Frankish,

Burgundian, made contributions (via Provençal), as did Old Norse and Old English via Norman French. Other words were borrowed directly from Old, Middle and Modern versions of Dutch and German, and still others came through the Germanic elements found in Latin (particularly Medieval Latin) and other Romance languages, like Walloon, Italian, and Spanish. Finally, Modern English
has made contributions to the French lexicon, most notably within the past few decades.

Scope of the dictionary

The following list details words, affixes and phrases that contain

Germanic etymons. Words where only an affix is Germanic (e.g. méfait, bouillard, carnavalesque) are excluded, as are words borrowed from a Germanic language where the origin is other than Germanic (for instance, cabaret is from Dutch, but the Dutch word is ultimately from Latin/Greek, so it is omitted). Likewise, words which have been calqued from a Germanic tongue (e.g. pardonner, bienvenue, entreprendre, toujours, compagnon, plupart, manuscrit, manoeuvre), or which received their usage or sense (i.e. were created, modified or influenced) due to Germanic speakers or Germanic linguistic habits (e.g. comté, avec, commun, on, panne, avoir, ça
) are not included.

Many other Germanic words found in older versions of French, such as Old French and Anglo-French are no longer extant in Standard Modern French. Many of these words do, however, continue to survive dialectally and in English. See: List of English Latinates of Germanic origin.

A-B

Main article: List of French words of Germanic origin (A-B)

C-G

Main article: List of French words of Germanic origin (C-G)

H-Z

Main article:
List of French words of Germanic origin (H-Z)

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Thomason & Kaufman 1991, p. 127.
  2. ^ "A brief history of the Franks". Eupedia.
  3. ^ Wise, The vocabulary of modern French: origins, structure and function, pg 35.
  4. ^ Price, The French language: present and past, pg 11.
  5. ^ Nadeau, Barlow, The Story of French, pg 24.

References

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