Ready for another French word of the week? Today, we’re going to learn all about the word taille.
Take a listen to its pronunciation in the audio clip below:
If you’re trying to find similarities in English through the sound of the word, we recommend that you stop right there! The French word taille has no translations related to the English word ‘tie’ or indeed the word ‘Thai’.
In most situations, you’ll find that taille translates as ‘size’. However, in different contexts it can also mean ‘height’, ‘waist’ and even the act of ‘pruning’ a plant. It certainly makes this versatile word a great candidate for our French word of the week.
When we get into our examples, you should be able to work out that this a feminine noun because it follows articles like une or la, or you can find adjectives around it in their feminine form. For more information, you can visit our Easy Learning French Grammar pages on noun genders, indefinite articles and definite articles.
With lots of different options for translation, let’s take a look at taille in action:
Tu fais quelle taille ? What size are you? ; What size do you take?
Ce pantalon n’est pas à votre taille. These trousers are not your size.
une chemise taille 36 / taille 38 a size 8 / size 10 shirt (remember that European clothes sizes are not the same number we use in the UK, but still increase in increments of two each time)
à taille réelle actual size ; life-sized
de petite taille small / short
de taille moyenne medium-sized / average height
de grande taille large (sized) / tall
J’aime bien ces arbres de grande taille. I really like these tall trees.
Ce mannequin a la taille très mince. This model has a very slender/slim waist.
Mes grands-parents ont fait la taille des lilas la semaine dernière. My grandparents pruned the lilacs last week.
être de taille à faire quelque chose to be capable of doing something
Now, we should also make you aware of this noun’s related verb, as its translation is quite different:
tailler to cut; to trim; to sharpen; to carve; to sculpt
tailler dans to cut into
tailler un crayon to sharpen a pencil
L’artisan a taillé soigneusement ce diamant. The artisan carefully cut this diamond.
Thanks for reading our blog on taille, we hope that you’ll come back next week to size up another French word!
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.
