Today a ‘maillot’ is a swimsuit on the beach or a shirt on a football pitch. Before it meant either, it named something nobody wore to swim: the cloth wrapped round a newborn baby.
This is a 12-card illustrated word-history of ‘maillot’ in black and white, with a sources page and two summary pages at the end. Print it as a deck to laminate, punch and clip onto a ring, or print the summary pages and use them as they are.
What’s included
The dancer - why a garment worn on a theatre stage was given the name of a baby’s wrapping.
The English cousin - an English word for something made of metal, which you’d now most likely see in a museum case.
The map - three more languages with a word from the same Latin, and the different way each one got it.
A sources page and a short guide for the adult.
For personal use only.
Who it’s for
KS3 and KS4 French learners meeting ‘maillot de bain’ in a clothes or holiday topic
Anyone who has watched the Tour de France and wondered about ‘le maillot jaune’
Learners who remember a word better when it comes with a reason, including dyslexic learners and those in specialist tuition
Home-educated children learning French
Parents learning alongside their child, and adults picking French back up
Why this exists
‘Maillot’ gives an English speaker nothing to hold onto. It doesn’t look like ‘swimsuit’, ‘shirt’ or ‘jersey’, and one French word covers all three. ‘Maillot de bain’ tends to turn up with holiday words and a football ‘maillot’ with sport, so it’s easy to learn them as two unrelated words. The history links the beach and the pitch, and the second meaning stops being a separate thing to learn.
I first made these for my dyslexic son.
How it prints
Print the 12 cards and the sources page single-sided, laminate and trim them, punch the top-left corner and clip them onto a binder ring. You build the deck yourself, so you’ll need a printer, a laminator and a ring. The finished deck goes in a bag or stays on the dinner table, ready to be dealt out and put back in order. The two summary pages at the end hold the whole word and need no laminating: print them and they’re ready.
Available now as a PDF download.
Today a ‘maillot’ is a swimsuit on the beach or a shirt on a football pitch. Before it meant either, it named something nobody wore to swim: the cloth wrapped round a newborn baby.
This is a 12-card illustrated word-history of ‘maillot’ in black and white, with a sources page and two summary pages at the end. Print it as a deck to laminate, punch and clip onto a ring, or print the summary pages and use them as they are.
What’s included
The dancer - why a garment worn on a theatre stage was given the name of a baby’s wrapping.
The English cousin - an English word for something made of metal, which you’d now most likely see in a museum case.
The map - three more languages with a word from the same Latin, and the different way each one got it.
A sources page and a short guide for the adult.
For personal use only.
Who it’s for
KS3 and KS4 French learners meeting ‘maillot de bain’ in a clothes or holiday topic
Anyone who has watched the Tour de France and wondered about ‘le maillot jaune’
Learners who remember a word better when it comes with a reason, including dyslexic learners and those in specialist tuition
Home-educated children learning French
Parents learning alongside their child, and adults picking French back up
Why this exists
‘Maillot’ gives an English speaker nothing to hold onto. It doesn’t look like ‘swimsuit’, ‘shirt’ or ‘jersey’, and one French word covers all three. ‘Maillot de bain’ tends to turn up with holiday words and a football ‘maillot’ with sport, so it’s easy to learn them as two unrelated words. The history links the beach and the pitch, and the second meaning stops being a separate thing to learn.
I first made these for my dyslexic son.
How it prints
Print the 12 cards and the sources page single-sided, laminate and trim them, punch the top-left corner and clip them onto a binder ring. You build the deck yourself, so you’ll need a printer, a laminator and a ring. The finished deck goes in a bag or stays on the dinner table, ready to be dealt out and put back in order. The two summary pages at the end hold the whole word and need no laminating: print them and they’re ready.
Available now as a PDF download.
