Every week, our blog looks at an interesting French word that you can add to your vocabulary. In this week’s edition, we’re studying the word sec.
We recommend listening to the pronunciations of both masculine and feminine forms in our audio clips below. Here’s the masculine form, sec…:
…and the feminine form, sèche:
Sec is a blog-worthy word because we can translate it in very different ways, which seem to be totally unrelated! First and foremost, sec means dry or dried, but also can mean sudden, sharp, as well as neat/straight when you’re talking about drinks. It might sound strange to use a term meaning ‘dry’ to talk about something liquid, but by the end of this blog you’ll know exactly how to handle this word!
While sec is most often used as an adjective, a word describing a noun, it’s occasionally used as an adverb, and also as a noun in some cases. As you might have noticed in the pronunciation section, it’s important to note that many French adjectives have spelling variations to make them agree with the noun they’re describing:
- Masculine singular – sec
- Feminine singular – sèche
- Masculine plural – secs
- Feminine plural – sèches
Now it’s time to move on to our examples, starting with the adjective:
C’est une crème pour la peau sèche. It’s a cream for dry skin.
Le désert d’Atacama, au Chili, c’est le désert le plus sec du monde ! The Atacama Desert, in Chile, is the driest desert in the world!
Mon grand-père fait un tagine de poulet aux fruits secs. My grandfather is making a chicken tagine with dried fruits in it.
Tes vêtements ne sont pas encore secs. Your clothes aren’t dry yet.
Ils aiment bien les vins blancs demi-secs. They really like semi-dry white wines.
avoir la gorge sèche to have a dry throat
abricot sec; figue sèche dried apricot; dried fig
We mentioned its other translations and different parts of speech, so let’s have a look at these in context:
d’un coup sec sharply
donner un coup sec to give a sharp blow/hit
Il m’a répondu d’un ton sec. He responded to me very curtly.
Le bruit sec nous a fait peur. The sudden noise scared us.
Alix ne boit que le whisky sec. Alix only drinks neat whisky.
boire sec to drink it all in one; to knock it back
frapper sec to hit hard
« tenir au sec » “keep in a dry place“; “keep dry“
Just for a little bonus information, sometimes you can use adjectives to work out the meanings of any related verbs. In this case, knowing that sec/sèche can mean dry, this can help you translate a verb with something similar at its root:
sécher to dry (out)
Congrats on learning yet another new word. There are so many intriguing French words to study that our supply of blogs will never go dry! See you next time.
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.
