French Dictionaries

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Top Monolingual French Dictionaries

Once you're at least an intermediate student of French, you need to think about investing in a monolingual (French-only) dictionary. While bilingual dictionaries are a great tool, they can have discrepancies, both major and minor. Their main weakness is in offering words that are no longer used. Using a French-only dictionary is much less risky, although still not perfect - asking a few native speakers is the best way to determine the appropriateness of any given word. The following monolingual dictionaries are listed from most to least complete.

1) Le Grand Robert Le Grand Robert is a single, infinitely useful CD-ROM containing the contents of 6 enormous books. Version 2 includes 100,000 words and 325,000 quotations, has an attractive and easy-to-use interface, and can be installed on your computer. (The previous version is half the price, but has a very basic interface and can only be run from the CD-ROM). Each entry includes pronunciation, etymology, historical uses, register, regionalities, and numerous examples, and everything is hypertexted. (French)
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2) Le Petit Robert With the notable exception of Le Grand Robert (a veritable encyclopedia of the French language), Le Petit Robert is indisputably the best French dictionary, with nearly 60,000 entries. The detailed definition for each entry includes pronunciation, etymology, historical uses, register, regionalities, and - my favorite! - example sentences from literary and historical sources. This is the dictionary that native speakers rely on, and what I recommend whole-heartedly for everyone, particularly advanced and fluent French speakers.


3) Le Petit Larousse illustré This dictionary is a little more "fun" than the Robert - it includes black/white and color photographs, and has a large section on culture générale. The 58,000 dictionary entries are much more basic than those in Le Petit Robert: no etymology, no quotes, and pronunciation only for words that don't follow normal French pronunciation rules. Advanced students can get by with this, although I still recommend Le Petit Robert.


4) Le Robert micro poche The abridged version of Le Petit Robert. This is a good choice for intermediate students, but if you plan to continue studying French, you're eventually going to want the unabridged Robert, so you might be better off just buying that now so that you'll be set for years to come.


• Top Bilingual French Dictionaries • Street French Slang Dictionary & Thesaurus • Top French Grammar Books • Top French Verb Books • Top Tools for Advanced Students		• Before You Buy a French Dictionary • Online French Dictionaries • French Proficiency - What is fluency? • Pronunciation

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