French Words For Beauty

 

French is such a beautiful language to speak and to hear. There are a few basic French words for beauty that you can work into your daily language use, to add some grace and beauty to your sentences and life. 

 

With just a handful of French words related to beauty, you can boost how intelligent you sound (and even make yourself sound more romantic.)  

 

One of these words is beauté. Beauty is defined as something that has qualities (color, smell, texture, pattern, etc.) that appeals to your aesthetic senses. 

 

There are lots of things you could use this word to describe from people to animals to books to nature and more. The possibilities are endless, meaning the opportunities for you to use these words are countless. 

 

As one of the more French common words, this is a great one to have in your toolbox.

 

 

 

4 French Words For Beauty 

 

Beauté

 

• IPA: /bo.te/, bo.te
• Gender: feminine
• Type: noun

L'élection présidentielle, ça n'est pas un concours de beauté.

The presidential election is not a beauty contest.

 

This is the direct translation of beauty from English into French. It is a feminine noun meaning "that which is beautiful." 

 

You could use this word when talking about an object or a girl. You may have heard it before in reference to a person, "She is a beauté." Or maybe they were talking about a horse, not a girl. 

 

No matter what you are referencing to, this is an excellent word to slip into your daily speech. 

 

Chances are, your non-french speaking audience will be able to figure out what it means without further explanation because it is a cognate. And at the same time, you will be able to learn it quickly, because it is a cognate!

 

(A cognate is a word that means and sounds/looks the same in two or more languages.)

  

Élégance

• IPA: /e.le.ɡɑ̃s/, e.le.ɡɑ̃s
• Gender: feminine
• Type: noun

Le tout baigne dans une élégance proche du surnaturel.

Everything is bathed in an elegance approaching the supernatural.

 

 

Another feminine noun. This is another possible translation for the word beauty. Its definition is "the quality of being beautiful," and it is another French to English cognate making it easy for you to learn or for your audience to understand. 

 

It is a gorgeous word to write and beautiful to say, but some may wonder if you are just pronouncing elegance wrong. So how would you use this word in your daily speech? 

 

You could say something has élégance, either a flower, a person, an animal, or anything else you believe has the quality of beauty. 

 

Use this instead of beauté when you say something has the quality of beauty rather than being a beauty.

 

Charme

• IPA: ʃaʁm; 
• Gender: masculine; 
• Type: noun, verb; 

Le vieux cottage a un certain charme en soi.

The old cottage has a certain charm about it.

 

 

A synonym for beauty is charm. In French, Charme means having the ability/quality to arouse admiration. It is very similar to the direct definition of beauty, so you may want to add this word to your vocabulary list too. 

 

Just as the other words on this list are, charme is a cognate for an English word, charm. 

 

Typically you will use this in reference to a person, often a guy, having charme. 

 

Maybe you are talking about someone who is really polite or even flirty. 

 

This word, however, is not the word to use if you are talking about a good luck charm or a charm you would wear on a bracelet, so be careful!

 

Grâce

• IPA: ɡʁɑs, /ɡʀas/
• Gender: feminine
• Type: noun

Mais sa grâce a été préservée.

But her beauty was preserved.

  

 

This word is very similar to charme, only it is more feminine. In French, words are feminine or masculine. When it comes to descriptive words, one would (usually) pair a feminine word with a female person. 

 

So, where you may use the previous word for primarily talking about a guy, you use this word mainly to talk about girls or more feminine people. 

 

Once again, this word is a cognate, making it easy to remember and understand!

4 Major French Words Associated With Beauty

There you have it, four great fancy French words for beauty that you can use on a daily basis. They are easy to learn and understand because they are based on cognates. Learning French can work just like that! 

 

You can focus on common words and build up from there to start incorporating French into your life; you could be fluent in no time! 

 

There are only twenty-five hundred words that make up ninety-five percent of people's day to day speech, and you just learned four of them. 

 

If you are interested in learning more, you can go to mostusedwords.com and get a French dictionary organized by the words that are most used in the language (there are also other language options if you are interested.) 

 

Take these four words and double it, triple it, learn a few more each day utilizing the book with words and practice sentences, and before long, this beautiful language can be yours!