Appendix:French terms inherited from Latin

French words borrowed from Latin easily outnumber those inherited from it.

If you are not certain whether a given word was inherited from Latin or borrowed, then please avoid adding using either {{inh}} or {{bor}} and use {{der}} instead.

Several characteristics of Latin borrowings are identified below.

Latinisms retain intervocalic singleton stops, while inherited vocabulary shows lenition (all the way to zero for dentals and zero or /j/ for velars).

*Old French

Caveat: /p b/ may remain unchanged in native vocabulary if the following vowel is lost early on and followed by /l/.

Much the same applies to stops in this environment.

*Old French

In inherited vocabulary, word-initial velars palatalize before /a/, eventually yielding modern /ʃ/ and /ʒ/. This is rarely the case for Latin borrowings (but cf. charité and chalice).

In closed syllables, short Latin /i/ remains /i/ in borrowings (or /ɛ̃/ if nasalized) but lowers ultimately to /e~ɛ/ in inherited vocabulary (or /ã/ if nasalized), unless lost entirely via syncope.

*Old French

Short Latin /u/ has several outcomes in native vocabulary, but never /y/ (spelled ⟨u⟩). The latter is a sure sign of a Latinism.

These sequences are retained in Latinisms, but in native vocabulary the /p/ is lost and /k/ lenites to /j/ (which later merges with the preceding vowel).

Any word beginning with /s/ followed by another consonant is borrowed. In native vocabulary, the result is /sC/ > /esC/, with subsequent loss of the /s/ in most cases. Early Latinisms also show the addition of an initial /e/ (cf. espace, espèce), and /s/ may subsequently be lost, as in état or étude.

In these sequences, /l/ is always retained in Latinisms, as is /n/, unless word-final and not protected by a following ⟨e⟩ (which indicates an original schwa). In any case, /l/ and /n/ never yield the palatalized outcomes /j/ and /ɲ/ in borrowings.

These vowels remain unchanged in Latin borrowings, at least orthographically, but undergo drastic evolutions in inherited vocabulary.

Caveat: inherited /o ō/, if followed by a nasal consonant, remain close to their etymological values. Cf. Latin bona, nōmen > French bonne, nom.

Word-internally, these are always lost in inherited vocabulary, but not in Latinisms.

The more mundane a word's definition and widespread its usage, the more likely it is to be native. No phonological criteria could tell one, for instance, whether the French plus (from Latin plūs) is inherited or borrowed. It is, however, the standard word for 'more' in French, and it always has been, meaning that it is, beyond any reasonable doubt, an inherited word. Phonological criteria also fail for tangent (from Latin tangentem), which can, however, be identified as a Latinism by the fact that it is mathematical jargon first attested in early modern writings.

An inherited word may look like a borrowing in certain respects. Septante (from Latin septuāgintā), for instance, has /pt/, which is a hallmark of borrowed vocabulary, but otherwise it looks entirely inherited. In fact, septuāgintā originally yielded, in Old French, the entirely regular outcome setante, to which /p/ was added in modern times under Latin influence. Victuaille (from Latin vīctuālia) is a similar case: Old French had the regular outcome vitaille, which was later modified, to better resemble the Latin word, by adding /k/ and /y/. Note that such words are not 'semi-learned borrowings', as they were in fact inherited, albeit later modified.

If borrowed early enough, a Latin word may undergo some 'native' sound changes anyway. Such is the case for livre 'book', from Latin librum, which shows the regular sound change /-br-/ > /vr/. The /i/ of livre, however, betrays the word's borrowed nature, as the Latin librum had a short /i/. (An inherited form of it would have rather looked like *loivre.) The term 'semi-learned' could be used in such cases, but 'early borrowing' is a more specific description.

It often happens that French inherits a Latin verb and later borrows a prefixed version of the same verb, which it then adapts to the inherited one. Latin ducere, for instance, survived until recently in French as duire, with the etymological sense of 'guide, direct'. Latin producere, however, only entered French in the fourteenth century as the learned borrowing produire (with the same meanings as English produce), which was built from the prefix pro- and the existing (native) verb duire. Such words can be identified as Latinisms not only by their usually late date of first attestation, but also by their relatively abstract and often suspiciously Latin-like meanings.

For those who can read French, the TLFi (Trésor de la langue française informatisée) is a convenient source for identifying Latinisms, which it usually notes as 'empr. au lat.' It also provides a given word's medieval forms, if they are attested.

A far better source is the German FEW (Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch), which includes a section at the end of each entry explaining whether the French term and its Romance cognates are inherited or borrowed.

• Appendix:Italian terms inherited from Latin
• Appendix:French doublets