In today’s lesson we’ll take a look at the French word pièce. While there’s nothing particularly difficult about this word, it has several meanings including room, piece, coin and more. We’ll cover all these usages with example sentence and audio.
Pièce Meaning & Translation
The French word pièce comes from medieval Latin word petia, which means “small piece” or “small morsel”.
Rooms
In French, pièce refers to a room in the house. A pièce can be any room. The words chambre or chambre à coucher specifically mean “bedroom”. Many students confuse pièce and chambre.
Le salon est la plus belle pièce de cette maison.
The living room is the most beautiful room of the house.
Les enfants sont dans leur chambre.
The kids are in their bedroom.
The terms deux-pièces (literally two rooms) and trois-pièces (literally three rooms) are used to describe apartments. A deux-pièces is a one bedroom apartement (bedroom + living room/kitchen) and a trois-pièces is a two bedroom apartment.
J’ai trouvé un petit deux-pièces à louer au centre-ville.
I found a small one bedroom apartment for rent downtown.
Coins
Piece can also mean a coin of money. This equates to “piece” as in a 50-cent piece (half dollar), for example. The expression par hasard in our example sentence means “by chance” or “by any chance”.
Tu n’aurais pas une pièce de cinquante centimes, par hasard ?
You wouldn’t have a 50 cent coin by any chance?
Play (theater)
In French a une pièce de théâtre refers to a theater play.
Nous allons voir une pièce de theâtre ce soir.
We’re going to a play tonight.
Piece of a material
Pièce can also equate to the direct the same word “piece” as in “piece of something” in English.
Le boucher vend une pièce de viande à la cliente.
The butcher sold the piece of meat to the customer.
More usages
The word pièce can be found in many other forms. Here are some examples:
- pièce de résistance pièce de résistance (most important part)
- pièce montée (f) wedding cake
- pièce principale/pièce à vivre main (living) room
- pièce rapportée hanger-on, fifth wheel
- emporte-pièce m cookie cutter
- pièce d’identité ID card
- une-pièce m one-piece swimsuit
Conclusion
Et voilà ! You now know exactly how to use pièce in French. Now check out our lesson covering the word journée, which refers to the course or duration of a day.
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