It’s that time again – welcome back to our French word of the week blog! Today the French word we’re focusing on is loin.
As we have a word with the same spelling in English, you might want to listen to the audio clip to hear how it’s pronounced in French:
We did say that there’s an English word with the same spelling. But we didn’t say that it has the same meaning… While the word ‘loin’ refers to a certain part of the body for humans and some animals, this has absolutely zero relation to the French word loin.
In French, loin is used primarily as an adverb meaning far (away), a long way or a long time ago. This is a classic example of a ‘false friend’, where there is no connection whatsoever between two words that look the same in both languages.
Before we get into some examples, we’ll skim over the grammar. As an adverb, the purpose of loin is to modify or describe a verb, an adjective, or another adverb, which you’ll see in our examples coming up. You can read more information in our Easy Learning French Grammar section on adverbs.
Ready for some examples of the adverb in action? Remember that loin can work in contexts of distance, time and even metaphorically – it’s a truly versatile word:
Nous habitons tellement loin d’ici. We live really far from here.
moins loin (que) not as far (as)
plus loin (que) further (than)
L’aéroport est plus loin que la gare. The airport is further than the station.
En avion ce n’est pas loin. By plane it’s not far.
pas loin de … not far off…
Cette livraison n’est pas loin d’arriver 24 heures en retard ! This delivery isn’t far off being 24 hours late!
Son anniversaire me semble déjà loin. To me, her birthday already seems like a long time ago. (Note how loin is used for describing a time in the past.)
Son anniversaire n’est plus loin, je devrai acheter un cadeau. Her birthday isn’t far off now – I’ll need to buy a present. (Note how loin is used here for describing time in the future.)
One last thing to flag is that loin is sometimes used as a masculine noun, but mostly only in certain adverbial phrases – that is, multi-word phrases that act like adverbs in a sentence:
au loin in the distance
On espérait qu’on verrait les montages au loin. We were hoping that we would see the mountains in the distance.
de loin from far away; from a distance
Tous mes amis viennent de loin pour mon mariage. All of my friends are coming a long way / from a distance for my wedding.
Well done yet again for expanding your French vocabulary with a new word. And you’re certainly not far off picking up another – see you next 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.
