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
Word origin
According to Wiktionary.org, 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. This page explores French food vocabulary in depth.
Le beurre est un produit laitier.
Butter is a dairy product.
This is a fun example sentence! This lesson explains how to pronounce croissant. 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.
Conclusion
Et voilà ! Now you know how to use beurre in French! Now check our this lesson explaining how to order food in restaurants.
