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French
Vocabulary
French
Vocabulary
Fifth Edition
ISBN: 978-1-26-046283-8
MHID: 1-26-046283-8
The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-1-26-046282-1,
MHID: 1-26-046282-X.
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MARY E. COFFMAN CROCKER is a French editor, author and consultant in Toronto, Ontario. She was previously Senior
Editor, French as a Second Language, Copp Clark Pitman, Toronto, Ontario; Directrice des Éditions, Langues Secondes, Centre
Éducatif et Culturel, Montréal, Québec; and Sponsoring Editor, Foreign Language Department, McGraw-Hill Book Company,
New York, New York. She is also the author of Schaum’s Outline of French Grammar, Sixth Edition and a biographee in Who’s
Who of American Women, Ninth Edition.
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PREFACE
French Vocubulary can be used as a reference book, a review text, or as a companion to any basic text. It
provides the reader with the vocabulary needed to converse efffectively about everyday topics. In addition to
reinforcing vocabulary of current textbooks., the book also enriches the student’s knowledge of the language by
providing words and expressions that seldom appear in typical textbooks but that are essential for communicat-
ing comfortably about a given situation.
The book is divided into ten units organized according to themes. Each unit contains several chapters
related to the theme. The content of each chapter is focused on a real life situation such as making a telephone
call, travelling by plane or train, staying at a hotel, or shopping for food. The book has been updated to include
changes for many of the topics. New to Unit 4 is a section on social media and electronic devices such as smart-
phones and tablets. Each chapter is divided into subtopics. Key words are presented in illustrations and in text
presentations. Words that are specifically French Canadian are flagged as such. Extensive footnotes inform the
reader of other ways of saying the same thing and further clarify the use of words.
To enable readers to build and retain the new vocubulary, the book provides many opportunities to use the
new words. After the presentations of new words, the student is immediately directed to practice these words in
a multitude of exercises. Personalized questions, open-ended questions, and role-playing suggestions provide
for more communicative practice. Answers are provided at the back of the book so students can make prompt
self-correction.
Appendixes include numbers, dates, and times; a special list of all foods; equivalent European and North
American clothing and shoe sizes; family relationships; francophone countries; weights and measures; and
personal correspondence. At the end of the book, a French-English and English-French glossary contain most
of the key words introduced in the book.
See the ad on the inside of the front cover for directions on downloading a companion audio recording
of some of the answer keys (page 297). A picture of headphones appears by the exercises that have answers
recorded. You can use these recordings to practice your French comprehension and pronunciations skills
For grammar reference and practice, the student can consult Schaum’s Outline of French Grammar.
Spelling Reforms
Although the Académie française has recently recommended spelling reforms, they are not widely imple-
mented, so the changes are not applied in the body of this book and in most textbooks. The Académie considers
both the old and the new forms correct. Following are some of the new rules.
The circumflex (^) is no longer obligatory on the letters i and u except in instances where a word without
the accent can be confused for another word.
New Old
maitresse maîtresse
paraitre paraître
But:
New Old
vingt-et-un vingt et un
quatre-cent-quarante-deux quatre cent quarante-deux
With verbs that have the letter é in the next to the last syllable of the infinitive, the é becomes è in the future
and conditional tenses.
Infinitive: préférer
New Old
Future:
je préfèrerai je préférerai
Conditional:
je préfèrerais je préférerais
The agreement of the past participle of laisser when followed by an infinitive is now optional.
New Old
vii
Tennis 223
Skiing 224
Swimming 225
Other sports and leisure activities 226
At the fitness or health club 227
The poet, too, appears to have paid 2s. 6d. for the insertion of his
lines in the Caledonian Mercury.
From this time onward, an annual ball, given by ‘the Right
Honourable Company of Hunters’ in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, is
regularly chronicled. At one which took place on the 8th January
1736—the Hon. Master Charles Leslie being 1735.
‘king,’ and the Hon. Lady Helen Hope being
‘queen’—‘the company in general made a very grand appearance, an
elegant entertainment and the richest wines were served up, and the
whole was carried on and concluded with all decency and good order
imaginable.’ A ball given by the same fraternity in the same place, on
the ensuing 21st of December, was even more splendid. There were
two rooms for dancing, and two for tea, illuminated with many
hundreds of wax-candles. ‘In the Grand Hall [the Gallery?], a table
was covered with three hundred dishes en ambiqu, at which sate a
hundred and fifty ladies at a time ... illuminated with four hundred
wax-candles. The plan laid out by the council of the company was
exactly followed out with the greatest order and decency, and
concluded without the least air of disturbance.’
On the 27th January 1737, ‘the young gentlemen-burghers’ of
Aberdeen gave ‘a grand ball to the ladies, the most splendid and
numerous ever seen there;’ all conducted ‘without the least confusion
or disorder.’ The anxiety to shew that there was no glaring
impropriety in the conduct of the company on these occasions, is
significant, and very amusing.[730]
The reader of this work has received—I fear not very thankfully—
sundry glimpses of the frightful state of the streets of Edinburgh in
previous centuries; and he must have readily understood that the
condition of the capital in this respect represented that of other
populous towns, all being alike deficient in any recognised means of
removing offensive refuse. There was, it must be admitted,
something peculiar in the state of Edinburgh in sanitary respects, in
consequence of the extreme narrowness of its many closes and
wynds, and the height of its houses. How it was endured, no modern
man can divine; but it certainly is true that, at the time when men
dressed themselves in silks and laces, and took as much time for
their toilets as a fine lady, they had to pass in all their bravery
amongst piles of dung, on the very High Street of Edinburgh, and
could not make an evening call upon Dorinda or Celia in one of the
alleys, without the risk of an ablution from above sufficient to
destroy the most elegant outfit, and put the wearers out of conceit
with themselves for a fortnight.
The struggles of the municipal authorities at sundry times to get
the streets put into decent order against a 1735.
royal ceremonial entry, have been adverted
to in our earlier volumes. It would appear that things had at last
come to a sort of crisis in 1686, so that the Estates then saw fit to
pass an act[731] to force the magistrates to clean the city, that it might
be endurable for the personages concerned in the legislature and
government, ordaining for this purpose a ‘stent’ of a thousand
pounds sterling a year for three years on the rental of property. A
vast stratum of refuse, through which people had made lanes
towards their shop-doors and close-heads, was then taken away—
much of it transported by the sage provost, Sir James Dick, to his
lands at Prestonfield, then newly enclosed, and the first that were so
—which consequently became distinguished for fertility[732]—and the
city was never again allowed to fall into such disorder. There was
still, however, no regular system of cleaning, beyond what the street
sewers supplied; and the ancient practice of throwing ashes, foul
water, &c., over the windows at night, graced only with the warning-
cry of Gardez l’eau, was kept up in full vigour by the poorer and
more reckless part of the population.
An Edinburgh merchant and magistrate, named Sir Alexander
Brand, who has been already under our attention as a manufacturer
of gilt leather hangings, at one time presented an overture to the
Estates for the cleaning of the city. The modesty of the opening
sentence will strike the reader: ‘Seeing the nobility and gentry of
Scotland are, when they are abroad, esteemed by all nations to be the
finest and most accomplished people in Europe, yet it’s to be
regretted that it’s always casten up to them by strangers, who admire
them for their singular qualifications, that they are born in a nation
that has the nastiest cities in the world, especially the metropolitan.’
He offered to clean the city daily, and give five hundred a year for the
refuse.[733] But his views do not seem to have been carried into effect.
After 1730, when, as we have seen, great changes were beginning
to take place in Scotland, increased attention was paid to external
decency and cleanliness. The Edinburgh magistrates were anxious to
put down the system of cleaning by ejectment. We learn, for
example, from a newspaper, that a servant-girl having thrown foul
water from a fourth story in Skinners’ Close, ‘which much abused a
lady passing by, was brought before the bailies, and obliged to enact
herself never to be guilty of the like 1735.
practices in future. ’Tis hoped,’ adds our
chronicler, ‘that this will be a caution to all servants to avoid this
wicked practice.’
There lived at this time in Edinburgh a respectable middle-aged
man, named Robert Mein, the representative of the family which had
kept the post-office for three generations between the time of the
civil war and the reign of George I., and who boasted that the pious
lady usually called Jenny Geddes, but actually Barbara Hamilton,
who threw the stool in St Giles’s in 1637, was his great-grandmother.
Mein, being a man of liberal ideas, and a great lover of his native city,
desired to see it rescued from the reproach under which it had long
lain as the most fetid of European capitals, and he accordingly drew
up a paper, shewing how the streets might be kept comparatively
clean by a very simple arrangement. His suggestion was, that there
should be provided for each house, at the expense of the landlord, a
vessel sufficient to contain the refuse of a day, and that scavengers,
feed by a small subscription among the tenants, should discharge
these every night. Persons paying what was then a very common
rent, ten pounds, would have to contribute only five shillings a year;
those paying fifteen pounds, 7s. 6d., and so on in proportion. The
projector appears to have first explained his plan to sundry
gentlemen of consideration—as, for example, Mr William Adam,
architect, and Mr Colin Maclaurin, professor of mathematics, who
gave him their approbation of it in writing—the latter adding: ‘I
subscribe for my own house in Smith’s Land, Niddry’s Wynd, fourth
story, provided the neighbours agree to the same.’ Other subscribers
of consequence were obtained, as ‘Jean Gartshore, for my house in
Morocco’s Close, which is £15 rent,’ and ‘the Countess of
Haddington, for the lodging she possessed in Bank Close,
Lawnmarket, valued rent £20.’ Many persons agreed to pay a half-
penny or a penny weekly; some as much as a half-penny per pound
of rent per month. One lady, however, came out boldly as a recusant
—‘Mrs Black refuses to agree, and acknowledges she throws
over.’[734]
Mr Mein’s plan was adopted, and acted upon to some extent by the
magistrates; and the terrible memory of the ‘Dirty Luggies,’ which
were kept in the stairs, or in the passages within doors, as a
necessary part of the arrangement, was fresh in the minds of old
people whom I knew in early life. The city was in 1740 divided into
twenty-nine districts, each having a couple 1735.
of scavengers supported at its own expense,
who were bound to keep it clean; while the refuse was sold to persons
who engaged to cart it away at three half-pence per cart-load.[735]
The Muse, it was said, after a long career of glory in ancient times,
had reached the shores of England, where Shakspeare taught her to
soar:
‘At last, transported by your tender care,
She hopes to keep her seat of empire here.
For your protection, then, ye fair and great,
This fabric to her use we consecrate;
On you it will depend to raise her name,
And in Edina fix her lasting fame.’
All this was of course but vain prattle. The piece appeared in the
Gentleman’s Magazine (August 1737), and no doubt awoke some
sympathy; but the poet had to bear single-handed the burden of a
heavy loss, as a reward for his spirited attempt to enliven the beau
monde of Edinburgh.