Frenchman

How to spell frenchman

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce frenchman

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does frenchman mean?

1. nounA male native or citizen of France.

Frenchman in a sentence

• The frenchman at the next table ordered his coffee in a rapid Parisian accent.

• Our tour guide was a retired frenchman who had lived in Lyon all his life.

Where does frenchman come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a compound of the adjective 'French' and the noun 'man', both of which come down to us from Old English. 'French' descends from the Old English Frencisc, meaning 'of the Franks', the Germanic people whose name was attached to the land we now call France; the Franks themselves may have been named after the franca, a kind of throwing spear or javelin. 'Man' goes back to the Old English mann, which originally meant simply 'a human being' before it narrowed to mean an adult male. The two elements were joined to form a label for a male inhabitant or citizen of France, a usage well established in English by the medieval period. Because it is built from two perfectly familiar English words, the spelling is regular, and the only real trap is remembering it is written as one solid word with the silent-feeling -ch- of 'French' intact.

How the word is built

• French (of France)
• -man (adult male person)