French words for the body and health: 50 words

50 French words for the body and health

Nouns come with their article, and the second section gives the gender where the list shows only l'. This is the pack the Contos web app uses for flashcard review.

How do you say what hurts? J'ai mal à…

French doesn't say "my head hurts". It says "I have pain at the head": avoir mal à plus the body part with its article. À joins with le to make au, and with les to make aux, so the shape of the phrase depends on the gender of the noun.

Le ventre (belly) isn't in the list, but it is the word people use for stomach ache; l'estomac is the organ itself. The list's nouns le mal de tête and le mal de dents exist too, but in conversation the verb phrase is far more common.

Faire mal: when something hurts you

The list's faire mal turns the sentence round: the painful thing is the subject. Ça fait mal (that hurts), mon genou me fait mal (my knee hurts), tu me fais mal (you're hurting me). Hurting yourself takes se faire mal: je me suis fait mal au pied.

La main, les yeux: body words that need a second look

With parts of the body, French usually prefers le, la or les where English uses "my" or "his". When it is clear whose hand is meant, it is just la main:

The same goes for je me lave les mains (I wash my hands) and elle a les yeux bleus (she has blue eyes). When you do use a possessive, it agrees with the body part, not the owner: son cœur is his or her heart, because cœur is masculine.

• l'œil has an irregular plural: les yeux. One eye, two yeux.
• le genou becomes les genoux. Le bras, le nez, le dos and le corps already end in -s or -z and don't change.
• la main is feminine, although most nouns in -ain are masculine.
• Hidden by l': l'oreille, l'allergie, l'ordonnance and l'urgence are feminine; l'œil, l'estomac, l'hôpital and l'exercice are masculine.

At the doctor's and the pharmacy

In France you usually see un médecin généraliste, a GP, and call them Docteur when you speak to them. Two pairs of words are easy to mix up: le médecin is the doctor and le médicament is the medicine you take, while la médecine is medicine as a subject. Blessé means injured, not blessed: une blessure is an injury.

French pharmacies, marked by a green cross, give advice as well as selling medicine, but many medicines need une ordonnance, a prescription. Hospital A&E is les urgences, always plural. The medical emergency number in France is 15, and 112 works across Europe.

The list gives both forms for nurse: l'infirmier for a man and l'infirmière for a woman. The feminine is the form you will hear most often. For feelings rather than symptoms, see French words for emotions.