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FRENCH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

mauvais.

bad

7 characters2 syllables approx.Français language

Meaning & usage

adj/mo.vɛ//mɔ.vɛ/
  1. bad

  2. wrong, incorrect

    Il a choisi la mauvaise réponse.
Where this word comes from

Inherited from Middle French maulvais, from Old French malvais, malveis (“evil, wicked, bad, of poor or inferior quality", later also "unlucky”), from Late Latin malifātius (“unfortunate”, 4th c.), from Latin malus (“bad”) + fātum (“fate”). Cognate with Italian malvagio, and with Spanish and Portuguese malvado, all of them through Old Occitan malvatz. According to some sources, influenced by Frankish *balu ~ balwa- ("evil, wicked, of poor quality"; compare Old Saxon balowīso (“one who leads another into ruin, seducer to evil, the Devil”)) or by related Gothic 𐌱𐌰𐌻𐍅𐌰𐍅𐌴𐍃𐌴𐌹 (balwawēsei, “wickedness, malice”), which was suspected to have become altered in some way to become Vulgar Latin *malvesius ~ malvesi- under influence of Latin malus (“bad”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.