Les Animaux — animals & animal idioms | Vocabulary
🖨️ Print-friendly: use Ctrl+P (⌘P) or your browser menu to print this chart cleanly.
The essential animals in French — pets, farm animals and wild animals — each with audio. Animals — and the idioms they hide in. This French animals idioms they hide vocabulary list gives you 18 essential words — from le chien (the dog) to le serpent (the snake) — each with audio and its English translation. Use it to build the French words you need to talk about animals idioms they hide, then test yourself with the games below.
Les Animaux
Animals — and the idioms they hide in
À la maison · pets
À la ferme · farm
Sauvages · wild
🎬 The 20-second version
5 quick questions on « Les Animaux » — guess before the reveal. Practise with the free games → Open this short as a page — transcript included →
📘 Animal French you’ll actually hear
- French is FULL of animal idioms — learn the animals and you unlock them.
- Poser un lapin (to put down a rabbit) = to stand someone up.
- Avoir un chat dans la gorge = to have a frog (cat!) in your throat.
- Il fait un froid de canard (duck cold) = it’s freezing.
- Quand les poules auront des dents (when hens have teeth) = when pigs fly.
- Plural: un animal → des animaux; un cheval → des chevaux (the -al → -aux family).
🇬🇧 Animal names in French: gender, families and the fun parts
Learning french animal vocabulary means learning two things per animal: the word and its gender. Every animal noun is masculine or feminine as a WORD — le zèbre is masculine even for a female zebra — and that grammar rule is the first thing to memorize. For animals close to humans, French adds real male and female pairs: le chat / la chatte (the female cat), le chien / la chienne, and sometimes completely different words — le cheval (horse) but la jument (mare), le coq but la poule. Names end in a feminine suffix (-esse, -enne, -ette) often enough to guess, but the safest habit in language learning is the article-plus-noun reflex: never “chat”, always « le chat ».
The animal kingdom sorts into families worth learning as sets: les animaux domestiques (domestic animals — pets and farm), les animaux sauvages (wild animals), les animaux de la ferme, les oiseaux (birds), and the water world of sea animals — marine animals like le dauphin, la baleine, le requin, plus the sea creatures of every French menu: les fruits de mer. A mammal is un mammifère, a reptile un reptile, an amphibian un amphibien — the scientific animal terms are near-English, a rare freebie. The animals that live in the French countryside and the Alps — le sanglier (boar), la marmotte, le bouquetin — star in every hiking tale, and French culture keeps its fauna close: news reports count wolves, and half the natural world shows up in expressions.
Which is the fun part: French runs on animal words. « Il fait un froid de canard » (duck-cold = freezing), « avoir un chat dans la gorge » (a cat in the throat, where English has a frog), « poser un lapin » (to stand someone up), « une vache » as an exclamation. Different animals, same job — vocabulary and grammar smuggled inside jokes. Practice animal names with the games below, personalize the list with your own pets (the furry members of the family deserve their French names), and this corner of french-speaking small talk is yours.
Animals in French — FAQ
What is the French word for animal?
« Un animal », plural « des animaux » — one of the classic -al → -aux plurals. The animal’s name always carries an article: le lion, la girafe.
What is “I love animals” in French?
« J’adore les animaux » — note the definite article for general statements. For pets: « j’ai deux chats et un chien ».
What is the 20 animal name?
A starter twenty: chat, chien, cheval, vache, cochon, mouton, poule, coq, canard, lapin, oiseau, poisson, souris, ours, loup, renard, lion, éléphant, singe, dauphin — all in the chart above with genders and audio.
What are 1000 animal names?
French names the whole animal kingdom, but nobody needs a thousand: the ~40 common ones in this list cover conversation, menus and every children’s book ever written. Add regional fauna as you meet it.
🔊 Useful phrases
🔊 Example sentences
✍️ Practice
un cheval → des ___ (irregular plural)
Show answer
chevaux
« poser un lapin » veut dire… (idiom)
Show answer
to stand someone up
dog en français ? (pet)
Show answer
le chien
🎮 Practise this with games
🎯 More practice — vocabulary recall — both directions
How do you say « the dog »? (recall)
Show answer
le chien
What does « l’oiseau » mean? (recall)
Show answer
the bird
How do you say « the rabbit »? (recall)
Show answer
le lapin
What does « le cheval » mean? (recall)
Show answer
the horse
How do you say « the pig »? (recall)
Show answer
le cochon
What does « la poule » mean? (recall)
Show answer
the hen
How do you say « the lion »? (recall)
Show answer
le lion
What does « le loup » mean? (recall)
Show answer
the wolf
Go further: get the full picture in our guide French for absolute beginners — your first 40 words.
Animals in French — FAQ
How do you say common animals idioms they hide words in French?
For example: the dog is « le chien », the cat is « le chat », the bird is « l’oiseau ». The full list above has 18 French animals idioms they hide words, each with audio so you can hear the pronunciation.
What are the most useful French animals idioms they hide words to learn first?
Start with the basics: le chien (the dog), le chat (the cat), l’oiseau (the bird), le poisson (the fish), le lapin (the rabbit), le hamster (the hamster). Master these core French words before moving on to the rest of the list.
How can I memorise French animals idioms they hide vocabulary?
Learn the words in small themed groups, say each one out loud with the audio, and use it in a short sentence about your own life. Spaced repetition is what makes new vocabulary stick — see our guide to learning French vocabulary that sticks.
🎮 Practise this lesson
Games built from this exact page — turn what you just read into play: