French word of the week: main

Welcome back French learners. For this week’s word, we’re looking at the noun main. You might think you know how it should sound at first glance, but listen to the French pronunciation below:

Be careful with this word, as it’s very tempting to want to pronounce and translate it the same as our English word ‘main’. We call these types of words ‘false friends’ when learning another language. Sometimes the strategy of finding similar English words can work out well and help you translate the French word, but not in this case! The French word has nothing to do with the English word ‘main’ – main means hand.

As we mentioned, main is a noun (a naming word), but more specifically a feminine noun. Before we get into the details, you might also want a little refresher via our Easy Learning French Grammar pages on nouns.

While this noun has a pretty simple translation, it can appear in a lot of different contexts. Let’s look at main in use:

à la main by hand

écrit à la main handwritten

fait main handmade

Tous nos pots en terracotta sont faits main. All of our terracotta pots are handmade.

J’ai dû tout laver à la main à cause de la panne d’électricité. I had to wash everything by hand because of the power cut.

bagage à main hand luggage

une main courante a handrail

lever la main to put your hand up

un coup de main a (helping) hand

Merci mes frères pour le coup de main ! Thanks to my brothers for giving me a hand!

sous la main to hand; at hand (as in, to have something on you; to have something ready)

Avez-vous son numéro sous la main ? Do you have his phone number to hand?

In some examples of main, you’ll notice that it has an ‘s’ on the end. This is to make the word from a singular noun into a plural. For example:

s’en laver les mains to wash one’s hands of it (figuratively)

se laver les mains to wash one’s hands (literally)

However, it’s worth remembering that sometimes where we would say ‘hands’ in English, the French expression remains a singular noun. This is the most common example you’ll see:

serrer la main à quelqu’un to shake hands with someone

Les nouveaux collègues se sont serré la main. The new colleagues shook hands.

Well, it looks like you’ve got yet another French word under your belt. As your vocabulary improves more and more, you won’t need a helping hand from our blogs anymore!

Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.

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