Bonjour to our regular readers and bienvenue to any new French learners joining us! For today’s French word of the week blog, we’ve chosen the word soupçon.
To begin, have a listen to its pronunciation in the audio clip below:
Not everyone will have yet encountered the cedilla character ç, but did you notice how it sounds like an ‘s’ rather than a hard ‘c’? Try to remember this for future pronunciations with the cedilla ç.
There’s a chance you’ve come across the word soupçon in English, so you may have an idea of its meaning already. In French, soupçon is a noun with two very different meanings, depending on how it’s used. It means a dash or hint, as in a little bit of something, such as in a recipe – this is mainly how we use the word in English, too. But in French, it also means a suspicion or an inkling. While these contexts and concepts seem somewhat far apart from each other, you can almost see how they link – having ‘a suspicion’ is like having a ‘small amount’ of a certain belief or idea.
As a masculine noun, its articles include le, un or les in the plural. On the subject of plurals, you usually need to add -s to make a French singular noun into a plural, in this case making it soupçons.
Our examples should help to make everything a bit clearer in context:
ajouter un soupçon de quelque chose to add a dash/splash/sprinkle/drop of something
Est-ce qu’on peut ajouter un soupçon de rhum au dessert ? Can we add a dash of rum to the dessert?
Cette soupe a besoin d’un soupçon de sel. This soup needs a pinch of salt.
J’ai remarqué un soupçon de peur quand il commençait à parler. I noticed a hint of fear when he was starting to speak.
Mon père met toujours un soupçon de lait dans son café. My dad always puts a drop of milk in his coffee.
au-dessus de tout soupçon above (all) suspicion
avoir des soupçons to have (one’s) suspicions
Nous avons tous des graves soupçons quant à eux. We all have serious suspicions about them.
avoir soupçon de to suspect; to have an inkling; to have an idea of
Personne n’a eu aucun soupçon de la fête surprise ! Nobody had any clue about the surprise party!
Did you think that was all there is to it? Now that you’ve learned about the noun, we didn’t want to let you go without knowing its related verb, soupçonner. If you already know the translation of the noun, can you guess what the verb might mean…?
soupçonner to suspect; to be suspicious; to doubt
soupçonner quelqu’un de quelque chose to suspect somebody of something
Si on avait soupçonné Kali de tricherie, on n’aurait pas joué avec elle. If we had suspected Kali of cheating, we wouldn’t have played with her.
Je soupçonnais toujours mes voisins. I was always suspicious of my neighbours.
Est-ce que tu soupçonnes vraiment ma sincérité ? Do you truly doubt my sincerity?
There you have it – you hopefully now have a soupçon more understanding of how to use this word in French. Come back next time to learn about a brand-new French word of the week!
Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
