papillon.
butterfly
Meaning & usage
butterfly
vif et léger comme un papillon
someone brilliant, versatile and inconstant
knot
ellipsis of écrou papillon (“wing nut, butterfly nut”)
butterfly stroke
le record du monde en nage papillon
nager le papillon
parking ticket
Les automobilistes parisiens ont fortement tendance à classer dans un tiroir les papillons qu'ils trouvent sur leur pare-brise.
butterfly valve
Where this word comes from
From Old French papeillon (12th c.), byform of paveillon, whence the modern doublet pavillon (“pavilion”). Both from Latin pāpiliōnem. The form with recovered -p- may be semi-learned, but has also been explained as a native development due to onomatopoeia. Another possibility would be influence by a hypothetical Old French *parpeillon, from Vulgar Latin *parpiliōnem (cf. Occitan parpalhon). The swimming sense is a semantic loan from English.
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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.