Skip to content

rhume

cold (illness)

noun ROOM Rare

Usage Note

rhume specifically means a common cold, not a general chill. The phrase avoir un rhume ('to have a cold') is standard. Rhume des foins is hay fever. Learners sometimes confuse rhume with froid (cold temperature) — they are unrelated in use; the initial rh- is silent and the word rhymes with 'room'.

Examples

"Il a attrapé un rhume la semaine dernière."

Natural Translation

He caught a cold last week.

Free starter pack

Building your French vocabulary?

Get the 100 most common French words as a free PDF — one email, no spam.

Explore French by topic