Bonjour to all of our French Word of the Week readers! This time, we’ve chosen the word chef for our blog.
You might recognise this word in English, so let’s start by hearing how it should sound in French. Listen to the audio clip below:
In English, the word ‘chef’ makes us immediately jump to thoughts of cooking and kitchens. However, in French, there are quite a few different translations. Chef can mean ‘head’ (as in top position, not the body part), ‘boss’, ‘chief’, ‘leader’ and of course, the one you’ve been waiting for, ‘chef’.
This noun can be attributed to all sorts of chefs, so it has both masculine, feminine and plural forms:
- un chef (m)
- une cheffe (f)
While it’s good to know all of the options, you’ll notice that French speakers don’t really use the full feminine spelling as much as simply saying ‘une chef’ or ‘la chef’. You usually just need to add -s to make a French singular noun into a plural, in this case chefs or cheffes.
With lots of words available for translation, this common word gets a lot of use both in and out of the kitchen in French. Let’s get into the examples, of which there are plenty:
« Désolé, je ne sais pas. Je demanderai à mon chef. » « C’est qui votre chef ? » “Sorry, I don’t know. I’ll ask my boss”. “Who is your boss?”
On n’a pas encore rencontré le nouveau chef d’entreprise. We haven’t met the new manager of the company yet.
Elle est désormais chef d’équipe ! From now on, she’s the team leader!
Son chef-d’œuvre ne sera plus exposé au grand public. Her masterpiece will no longer be exhibited to the general public.
au premier chef primarily
Cette bourse sera offerte au premier chef aux étudiants étrangers. This grant will primarily be offered to students from abroad.
chef de cuisine chef (in a kitchen)
chef de partie chef; line cook (a chef in charge of one station of the kitchen)
sous-chef sous-chef (usually the 2nd chef in command in a kitchen)
chef étoilé(e) Michelin-starred chef
Nous voudrions commander la spécialité du chef. We would like to order the chef’s special.
chef d’orchestre conductor (of an orchestra)
chef de gare (train) station manager
chef militaire military leader
chef de l’opposition leader of the opposition
chef de l’État head of state
en chef in-chief
général en chef general-in-chief
commandant en chef commander-in-chief
rédacteur en chef editor-in-chief
Congratulations on learning a new French word – even though you might have already known it in English! If you keep coming back to read our blog every week to pick up another word, you’ll be the leader of the pack in no 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.
