drôle

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word drôle. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word drôle, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say drôle in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word drôle you have here. The definition of the word drôle will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofdrôle, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.

French

Etymology

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”), itself from Old Norse troll, from Proto-Germanic *truzlą.[1]

Pronunciation

Adjective

drôle (plural drôles)

  1. funny, amusing
    Synonyms: comique; désopilant; marrant; rigolo (informal); poilant (France, informal); crampant (Quebec, informal); fendard (France, slang)
    On a beaucoup ri, il est vraiment très drôle.
    We laughed a lot, he was really so funny.
  2. (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

Descendants

  • Louisiana Creole: drol, dròl
  • → English: droll
  • ⇒ Esperanto: drola

Noun

drôle m (plural drôles, feminine drôlesse or drôlière)

  1. (archaic) rascal, scoundrel
    • 1845, Alexandre 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.
  2. (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

References

  1. ^ “droll”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.

Further reading

Anagrams

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia