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Le Beurre – butter

Le Beurre – butter

Le beurre in French means “butter”. This word made it onto my list as a word-of-the-day lesson as many students find the pronunciation to be difficult. Play the audio clip below a few times and the pronunciation will become very clear!

le beurre

butter

le beurre = butter in French

Word origin

The modern French masculine noun beurre (butter) comes from old French burre, which in turn comes from bútyrum in Latin.

Pronunciation

The pronunciation of beurre is: “buhr” or [bœʀ]. Note that this word is masculine. Many students make the mistake of thinking that it’s feminine – la beurre; that’s wrong.

Example sentences

In French, the word for dairy product is produit laitier.

Le beurre est un produit laitier.

Butter is a dairy product.

This is a fun example sentence! The French use miam-miam for “yum!” or “yummy!”.

J’adore manger les croissants au beurre. Miam-miam !

I love eating butter croissants. Yum!

The French use two synonymous feminine nouns for “peanut”: la cacahuète and l’arachide.

Les Américains mange beaucoup de beurre d’arachide.

Americans eat a lot of peanut butter.

For this last sentence, the adjective for “buttered” is beurré.

Je mange des tartines beurrées au petit déjeuner tous les matins.

I eat buttered toast every morning for breakfast.

Related lessons

References

French Word of the Day

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David Issokson
David Issokson is the founder and French teacher of Frenchlearner.com. With over 30 years of experience as a French learner and speaker, he is passionate about making the language accessible and enjoyable for everyone. David is dedicated to providing clear, practical, and effective resources to help you master French. Learn more about FrenchLearner on our about us page. Visit davidissokson.com, David's personal website.

David Issokson

David Issokson is the founder and French teacher of Frenchlearner.com. With over 30 years of experience as a French learner and speaker, he is passionate about making the language accessible and enjoyable for everyone. David is dedicated to providing clear, practical, and effective resources to help you master French. Learn more about FrenchLearner on our about us page. Visit davidissokson.com, David's personal website.

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