Acheter différents papiers en français au magasin
A1 French listening practice · French · Curated for beginners
What does “sopalin” mean in French?
Ask for du sopalin in France and you get kitchen paper towel, whatever brand is on the shelf. The neutral word is essuie-tout, literally “wipe-everything,” and both are heard — but sopalin is what a lot of people reach for first. It began as a trademark registered in 1948 by the Société du Papier Linge, and the name is just those three words clipped short: So-pa-lin.
It has travelled far enough from the brand that the Académie française now carries it as an ordinary noun, glossed as essuie-tout. French does this regularly with products that arrived first and named the category after them — un frigidaire for a fridge, du scotch for sticky tape — so a word that looks like plain vocabulary can turn out to be somebody’s registered trademark.