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colis parcel, package. Cognate with collar. From Italian. Related to cou (“neck”), collier (“necklace”), col (“collar”). When you carry a heavy package on your shoulder, the neck feels the big weight. Not to be confused with colline (“hill”). Example, un colis envoyé / reçu (“a sent / received package”). See also cou, collier.

cafard cockroach; depression, blues; sneak, hypocrite. This word and English kafir or kaffir (“unbeliever, especially one not believing in Islam”) borrow from its Arabic etymon. Suffix -ard implies pejorative (e.g. English drunkard). Unfortunately, there’s no convincing theory linking the Arabic word for “unbeliever” to a cockroach; perhaps they are equally unpleasant. The word doesn’t appear to be related to English chafer (“flying beetle”), which nevertheless can serve as a mnemonic if you know the word. Alternatively, imagine a café (either a small restaurant or a coffee shop) with cockroach problems (remember -ard implies something bad), or imagine a cockroach drinking coffee. Or imagine a person is allergic to cockroaches and will cough when smelling or touching their droppings. The sense of “depression” (as in the idiom avoir le cafard) came from French poet Charles Baudelaire’s famous poem Les Fleurs du mal (“The Flowers of Evil”). Note cafard is more frequent or common than blatte, a more formal name for “cockroach”.

somnoler to doze, to drowse, to slumber. Cognate with the root of insomnia. See also sommeil (“sleep”).

dédaigner to disdain (cognate), to despise. dédain disdain (n.), scorn, contempt. Change é to es and then to is to see the cognation.

miner to mine (coal, etc.) (cognate); to undermine, to sap, to undercut. Note the second meaning. But the figurative sense does not extend to information technology; data mining in English is l’exploration de données in French.

grenouille frog. Etymology doesn’t help. Use a mnemonic such as “frogs are greenish”.

lande wasteland, heath, moor (n.). Cognate with lawn. Possibly cognate with land. Landes is a department in Southewestern France. According to Wikipedia, “during the first part of the 19th century large parts of the department were covered with poorly drained heathland (French: lande) which is the origin of its name”.

carriole cart, petite charrette. Cognate with chariot. Suffix -ole is diminutive. The word bagnole (“car”, informal) was created after the model of this word.

lieue league (about one hour’s walking distance, two and half to three miles) (cognate). This unit of distance was used in ancient times. Unrelated to lieu (“place”), which is a homophone (pronounced the same); but lieue is feminine (as many nouns ending with e are) while lieu is masculine. The word lieue used figuratively may simply imply “far away”. See also banlieue (“suburb”).

itinéraire route, path, way to reach a place; itinerary. Note the first meaning. Example, obtenir un itinéraire en voiture dans Plans sur l’iPhone (“to get driving directions in iPhone Maps”; note itinéraire is masculine).

pâleur paleness, pallor. The noun for pâle (“pale”). Not to be confused with English parlor (French parloir), which is related to French parler (“to talk”); a parlor is literally a room where people talk.

effectif headcount (number of people), staff, work force; effective, actual. Note the first meaning, when it’s used as a noun. The work force are the people that effectively work. Examples, à petit effectif (“with a small staff / headcount”); sureffectif (“overstaffed”); sous-effectif (“understaffed”).

noircir to blacken. From noir (“black”). The ending -cir is not a suffix per se, but is from Latin suffix -sco (or -esco) indicating the starting (inchoative state) of an action. The ending in French durcir (“to harden”) is the same. For our purpose though, just think of it as a verb suffix.

marteler to hammer, to strike with a hammer. English martel (“hammer”) is from Old French martel, which changed to marteau in Modern French.

lugubre dismal, gloomy, lugubrious (cognate). If the word lugubrious sounds too literary or pedantic, as a mnemonic, think of the sounds gu, glu, gloo, or gru as implying sullenly unhappy, also in e.g. grumble, grumpy, groan, and of course gloomy. Phonosemantics or sound symbolism may be right on some words, although it may not be the case for this word.

râler to moan, to groan, to bitch,to protest or complain or criticize or nag. râle groan (n.). Cognate with raze, razor, with the root of erase. Doublet of racler (“to scrape”). The words have entered English vocabulary as rales (where a is pronounced like that in palm) as a medical term referring to the rattling sound heard with a stethoscope, and rail referring to a type of bird. Use a mnemonic and think “dissatisfied people moan and groan, and rally for a protest”. See also racler.

écureuil squirrel (cognate). Change é- to s- to see the cognation. Not to be confused with écurie (“stable for horses”).

valable valid (cognate), good or acceptable by authority under certain conditions. French valide is a less frequent word and almost always can be replaced by valable. (Valide has another meaning, “able-bodied”, as opposed to invalide.) Not to be confused with English valuable, which would be de valeur or précieux in French. Example, un permis de conduire valable / valide (“a valid driver license”).

rappel reminder; recall, return; vaccination booster. You may see this word on a sign below another road or street sign to remind you of a certain restriction. Examples, c’est notre dernier rappel (“this is our last reminder”); rappels de produits (“product recalls”); une piqûre / dose de rappel (“a booster shot”). See also rappeler (“to remind”, “to remember”).

croître to grow. Cognate with crescent, with Italian crescendo (“to increase”), which has entered English as a musical term (“play gradually more loudly”). And the noun croissant (which is also the past participle) has entered English referring to the kind of bread. From Latin crescere (“to grow”), where the first e, long and stressed, changed to oi in French as usual. The moon in the waxing crescent phase is growing in its bright shining side. Not to be confused with croire (“to believe”). Although a number of their conjugated forms are pronounced the same, those of croître tend to contain letters î and û instead of i and u when spelled out; e.g., the past participle of croître is crû while that of croire is cru. As a mnemonic, think of the upward-pointing circumflex in croître and its conjugated forms as the direction of growth.