What does “sopalin” mean in French?
Acheter différents papiers en français au magasin
A1 French listening practice · French · Picked for people who know a little
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.