drôle
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French
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Inherited from Middle French drolle (“a merry fellow, pleasant rascal”) from Old French drolle (“one who lives luxuriously”), from Middle Dutch drol (“fat little man, goblin”).
Pronunciation
[edit]Adjective
[edit]drôle (plural drôles)
- funny, amusing
- (sometimes with "de") strange, weird, bizarre
- 1882, Guy de Maupassant, Madame Baptiste:
- C’est drôle, mais c’est comme ça...
- It's weird, but that's how it is...
- 1901, Adolphe Orain, Contes de l’Ille-et-Vilaine, page 207:
- C’était un bien drôle de petit homme que le père Langevin, tailleur et porteur de contraintes au Grand-Fougeray.
- He was quite an odd little man, that Father Langevin, mason and "porteur de contraintes" in Grand-Fougeray
- 1977, “Dix ans plus tôt”, performed by Michel Sardou:
- Tu voulais m’épouser, quelle drôle d’idée, tu n’avais pas 15 ans
- You wanted to marry me, what an odd idea, you were only fifteen
Derived terms
[edit]Descendants
[edit]Noun
[edit]drôle m (plural drôles, feminine drôlesse or drôlière)
- (archaic) rascal, scoundrel
- 1845, Arthur Dumas, La Reine Margot:
- […] et puis, je me suis un peu détourné de la ligne droite pour aller jeter à la rivière un affreux enfant qui criait : À bas les papistes, vive l’amiral ! Malheureusement, je crois que le drôle savait nager.
- […] and then, I went a little off the straight part of the road to hurl a repulsive child who was shouting "Down with the papists, long live the admiral!" into the river. Unfortunately, I believe that the rascal could swim.
- (southern France, endearing) child, kid, lad
- 1969, François Mauriac, Un adolescent d’autrefois, Flammarion, page 284:
- Qu’est-ce que tu en sais, mon pauvre drôle ?
- What do you know about it, my poor little thing?
See also
[edit]Further reading
[edit]- “drôle”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Anagrams
[edit]Categories:
- French terms inherited from Middle French
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- French terms derived from Old French
- French terms derived from Middle Dutch
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