grille-pain

toaster

noun greel-PAN Rare

Usage Note

Grille-pain is a compound of griller ('to grill/toast') and pain ('bread'); it is invariable in the plural (des grille-pain). This invariability in hyphenated verb+noun compounds is a common French spelling rule worth noting. The alternative toaster (an anglicism) is also widely used in informal speech.

Examples

"Le grille-pain est en panne ce matin."

Natural Translation

The toaster is broken this morning.

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