from pp. 220-223

échouer to fail, faillir. Origin unknown. But échec, meaning “failure” and cognate with check in the sense of “checkmate” in playing chess, may be used as if it were a doublet. Alternatively, use chute (“fall”) as a mnemonic if you ignore é-. Not to be confused with English echo, which would be écho in French. Example, échouer à un examen (“to fail an exam”).

déplaire to displease (cognate), to be displeasing. Examples, cela me déplaît (“I don’t like that”, je n’aime pas ça; literally “that displeases me”); n’en déplaise à (“no offense to”, “with all due respect to”; said before the words that may indeed displease the said person).

dépouiller to strip; to skin (animal); to deprive, to despoil (cognate), to rob. dépouille (animal) skin, hide; (dead) body, corpse; plunder, spoils. Change é to es to see the cognation. English spoil here means “plunder” or “loot”. Alternatively, as a mnemonic, think of peau (“skin”), which somewhat sounds like -pou-, and prepend dé- for “removing”, thus “to skin”.

affoler to drive crazy or make panic; (reflexive) to panic. Examples, ne pas s’affoler (“not to panic”; note se); ne pas affoler l’opinion publique (“not to create panic among the public”). See also fou (“mad”, “crazy”).

salope (vulgar) slut, dirty woman, feminine equivalent of salaud (“bastard”); slutty, dirty. saloperie filth, rubbish. From sale (“dirty”). Suffix -erie is for an abstract noun. The suffix-like ending -ope is not explained, but some believe, probably incorrectly, that the words are related to English sloppy. Use sloppy, Salome (the Biblical woman who urged her father to kill John the Baptist), or sloven (“habitually dirty person”) as a mnemonic (and if the latter, note the common interchange between v, b, and p in Romance languages). See also sale, salaud.

tube tube, pipe, tuyau; (informal, music) hit. Note the second meaning. Think of Youtube, where tube refers to the old cathode ray tube TV. Examples, un tube de verre (“a glass tube”); tube digestif (“digestive tract”); un tube planétaire (“a world-wide hit”); un tube n°1 des ventes (“a number 1 hit”, “a number 1 hit in sales”).

suspect suspect (n.); suspicious (adjective). Note the second meaning when the word is used as an adjective. Examples, un individu suspect (“a suspicious individual”); cela m’est suspect (“this is suspicious to me”, “I have doubt about this”).

cuire to cook (cognate), to bake. cuit cooked. Cognate with the root of biscuit, which literally means “twice (bis-) cooked (cuit)”; “biscuits were originally cooked in a twofold process: first baked, and then dried out in a slow oven” (Wikipedia). English cuisine is related. The infinitive cuire is not to be confused with English cure (which would be guérir in French), even in the sense as in cured meat (which you may use as a mnemonic). If you know the word charcuterie (“a dish of cured meat and other things”; “a shop providing this dish”), a word borrowed from French, analyze it into char (Old French “flesh”, Modern French chair) + cuit (“cooked”) + -erie (noun suffix for a shop). Examples, elle a cuit / cuisiné le repas (“she cooked the meal”); il fait cuire à la maison (“he cooks / does cooking at home”); la terre cuite (“terracotta”, literally “baked earth”); voulez-vous la viande bien cuite ou à point? (“you want the meat well done or medium rare?”).

vigne vine (cognate). English vignette (“decorative designs in books, originally in the form of leaves and vines, to separate sections or chapters” according to Wikipedia; many other senses) is from French.

élancer (reflexive) to dash. The root is cognate with lance. Examples, il s’élancé vers l’ennemi (“he rushed upon the enemy”); la flèche de l’église s’élance / s’élève vers le ciel (“the church spire soars up to the sky”). See also élan (“momentum”).

cirer to wax, to polish. cire wax (n.). Cognate with kerosene (suffix -ene signifies one type of hydrocarbon as in benzene), with the first element of cerography (“drawing or writing into a wax surface”), if traced to Ancient Greek. When the word was in Latin, c was pronounced like k even before e. Consider the fact that both wax and kerosene are hydrocarbon. Alternatively, use serrer (“to tighten”, “to squeeze”; “to shake hands”) or English seal as a mnemonic and note that wax was used to tightly seal an envelope in the old days. Or imagine syrup like melted wax. Examples, polir et cirer une voiture (“to polish and wax a car”); cire à cacheter (“sealing wax”). See also cierge (“candle”).

pute whore, prostitute. Cognate with Spanish puta, which has entered English vocabulary. Alternatively, use the possible cognate putrid as a mnemonic. Or imagine the sound of spitting. Example, un fils de pute (“a son of bitch”). See also putain (“whore”).

canapé sofa, couch, settee. Cognate with canopy. From a Latin word meaning “mosquito net”. Later it changed to refer to a seat under this net and then to the seat itself. Imagine a couch with a canopy over it. This word has entered English vocabulary referring to a type of bread as hors d’œuvre (appetizer). According to Wikipedia, the English word canapé “comes from the French word for sofa, drawing on the analogy that the garnish sits atop the bread as people do on a couch.” In spite of cognation, this French word does not mean “canopy”, which would be canopée, an anglicized word from English canopy. Example, un canapé-lit (“a sofa bed”).

hôte host (masc.) (cognate); guest (masc. or fem.). To see the cognation, change the accented ô to os. Note that this word sometimes, less frequently, can mean “guest” (but hôtesse is definitely a hostess and invité definitely a guest), and you have to determine it from the context. (This kind of words that can take opposite meanings are called auto-antonyms or contranyms like English sanction, which can mean “approve” or “penalize”.) You may have seen this word in a French restaurant where a table d’hôte (literally “table of host”) menu means a meal at a fixed price with no or few choices.

pudeur modesty, decency, chastity, propriety, demureness, sense of shame or embarrassment (especially with regard to matters of a sexual or personal nature). Cognate with the root of impudent (“shameless”, “without shame”). Alternatively, use prudent or pure as a mnemonic.

rôder to loiter, to prowl, to wander about aimlessly or stealthily. Cognate with rotate. The wheel rotates and the cart wanders around. Alternatively, use rove (“to wander about”) or rover as a mnemonic, or imagine a rodent wandering around. Example, un voyou qui rôde dans la rue (“a thug prowling the street”).

papillon butterfly. Cognate with pavilion. The wings of a pavilion resemble those of a butterfly. See also éparpiller (“to scatter”). Examples, nager le papillon (“to swim the butterfly stroke”); un nœud papillon (“a bowtie”, literally “a butterly node”). See also éparpiller (“to scatter”).

flou blurred, blurry, fuzzy, unclear, vague, trouble. Etymology doesn’t help (cognate with the first element of lukewarm). Use a mnemonic such as “this material gives off blurry fluorescent light” or “one of the symptoms of flu is blurry vision”. Not to be confused with English flow (which would be couler in French), but you can imagine flowing water reflects blurry images. Examples, une image floue (“a blurry image”); un souvenir flou (“a hazy memory”); votre projet est un peu flou (“your plan is a little vague”).

passager passenger; temporary, passing, of a short duration, fleeting. Note the second meaning, when it’s used as an adjective. While the first meaning “passenger” is obvious, in some contexts, the synonym voyageur is used instead. Note the -er ending, which is not common for a noun; append -e to form its feminine and stress the ending syllable with a diacritic. Examples, une passagère (“a female passenger”); un bonheur passager (“a fleeting happiness”).

collier necklace; collar (cognate). Not to be confused with colline (“hill”) or coller (“to glue”, “to stick”). Example, un collier de perles / diamants (“a pearl / diamond necklace”).

sanglant bloody. Cognate with sanguine. Not related to sanglot (“sob”). Example, une plaie / blessure sanglante (“a bloody wound”). See also sang (“blood”).

damoiseau young man of noble birth (especially one that attracts women), vain man, dandy. Cognate with damsel (“young woman”, as in the phrase damsel in distress). Its female counterpart is demoiselle (“damsel”, “miss”), less commonly spelled as damoiselle, from which the familiar word mademoiselle (“Miss”, literally “my little lady”) is derived.

bidon can, canister, brique; (slang) phony, sham. Etymology doesn’t help. As a mnemonic, imgaine some beautiful beeds on a can, or imagine a game in which players bid on the marbles in a can. This word has entered English vocabulary meaning “water bottle for cyclists”. Bidonville (“slum”) has entered English referring particularly to the impoverished area of a French or North African town, where metal cans are used in building construction. Examples, un bidon / une brique de lait (“a carton of milk”; “a milk carton”; note unlike for verre, both senses are possible, possibly because the main function for a can is to hold content, not to consume its content); des élections bidon (“sham elections”; as a mnemonic to remember the meaning of “sham”, only for word study purposes, temporarily associate bidon with the name of one American president and keep it to yourself).

maudit damn. maudire to curse. From mal- (“bad”) + dit (“said”). The al-to-au change is also seen in mauvais (“bad”), chaud (“hot”, from Latin caldus), autre (“other”, from Latin alter).