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](https://www.frenchlearner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/beurre.jpg)
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.
Word of the Day Lessons | Lessons by David Issokson