French Sports Vocabulary

Here you will find a complete list of French sports vocabulary. A lot of names for sports words are borrowed from English, with only the first word or syllable being used.  For example, volleyball is “le volley” and basketball is “le basket“. Most of the borrowed words use the masculine gender and therefore take the direct article, “Le“. An exception is boxing, which is written in the feminine form: la boxe. NOTE: This is an audio lesson. Click on any of the French words or pictures below, listen and repeat.

la boxe boxing	la course running	la dance dancing
la gymnastique gymnastics	la lutte wrestling	la marche walking
la musculation bodybuilding	la pêche fishing	la plongée la plongée
la randonnée hiking/backpacking	la voile sailing	l’alpinisme mountaineering
l’athlétisme track and field	l’aviron rowing	le base-ball baseball
le basket basketball	le cyclisme biking	le foot soccer/football
le football américain American football	le golf golf	le handball handball
le hockey sur gazon field hockey	le hockey sur glace ice hockey	le jogging jogging
le parachutisme skydiving	le parpente paragliding	le patinage artistique figure skating
le patinage de vitesse speed skating	le ping-ping ping-ping	le ski de descente downhill skiing
le ski nautique water skiing	le tennis de table table tennis	le tennis tennis
le tir shooting	le vélo biking	le volley volleyball
l’équitation horseback riding	les arts martiaux martial arts	les sports de combat combat sports
l’escrime (f) fencing	l’haltérophilie (f) weightlifting	le rugby rugby

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