Noun: papillon
Gender: m
Hyphenation:
| Singular m | papillon |
| Plural m | papillons |
Sample Sentences
-
vif et léger comme un papillon (lively and light like a butterfly)
-
Avec sa cour folâtre de jeunes merveilleux, papillons de boudoirs […] Véronique était là. [1833, Gautier, Albertus:]
-
Le grand papillon noir, c'est la coiffure du pays. Coiffure gracieuse. De larges rubans de soie noire ajustés en cocarde sur le front, […] derrière laquelle les cheveux tombent sur le dos en deux longues nattes. [1842, Victor Hugo, Rhin:]
-
le record du monde en nage papillon (the world record for butterfly stroke)
-
nager le papillon (swimming butterfly)
-
Les automobilistes parisiens ont fortement tendance à classer dans un tiroir les papillons qu'ils trouvent sur leur pare-brise. (Parisian motorists have a strong tendency to file the tickets they find on their windshields in a drawer.)
Nouns inflected like papillon
trichogramme,
wintergreen,
urinoir,
contrespionnage,
aréomètre,
palefroi,
whiskey,
whippin,
tee-shirt,
hypocycloïde,
surrisque,
lanternon,
dissentiment,
phonogramme,
phonographe,
trioxygène,
fétichisme,
synode,
synthé,
modérantisme, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Old French papeillon (12th c.), byform of paveillon, whence the modern doublet pavillon (“pavilion”). Both from Latin pāpiliōnem. The form with recovered -p- may be semi-learned, but has also been explained as a native development due to onomatopoeia. Another possibility would be influence by a hypothetical Old French *parpeillon, from Vulgar Latin *parpiliōnem (cf. Occitan parpalhon). The swimming sense is a semantic loan from English. See: Latin Nouns '
papilio'.
Verbs referencing "papillon"
English Nouns
papillon, Catalan Nouns
papallona, Finnish Nouns
papiljotti.
Translations