Learn French Business and Medical Vocabulary: 506 Flashcards from Cash Flow to Moelle Osseuse

Most French vocabulary decks stop at bonjour and the restaurant menu. French Business & Medical on Flip It (deck code EW2230) skips all of that: 506 cards of the words you need in a Paris office, a supplier negotiation or a hospital ward. Around 310 cards cover business and finance, and roughly 196 cover medical and anatomical terminology. This guide explains what is inside and how to memorize it efficiently.

Sample cards

The business half: what you will master

Company structure and HR: entreprise, siège social, département, employé, licenciement, prime, emploi du temps, temporaire, délégation, suivi. Finance and accounting: perte, intérêt, flux de trésorerie, capitaux propres, seuil de rentabilité, bourse, devise, rachat, diversification, franchise, procès. Operations: commande, entrepôt, distribution, équipement, transport, licence, réseau, visioconférence, fichier, sceau. The tricky part of this section is the false friends — charge means a cost or load, examen is a review, intrant is an input — and the few words that look identical in both languages (innovation, organisation, collaboration, transport) but are pronounced very differently.

The medical half: what you will master

The anatomical section is organized system by system, exactly like a nursing or medical-French course:

• Anatomical position: antérieur, postérieur, supérieur, inférieur, médial, latéral, superficiel, profond; plan sagittal, coronal, transversal; en décubitus ventral / dorsal.
• Integumentary & musculoskeletal: épiderme, derme, hypoderme, périoste, diaphyse, épiphyse, os compact / spongieux, articulation synoviale, liquide synovial, muscle agoniste / antagoniste / synergiste, contraction concentrique / excentrique / isométrique.
• Circulatory & lymphatic: aorte, veine cave, artériole, veinule, oreillette, ventricule, valvule tricuspide / mitrale / semi-lunaire, péricarde, globule rouge / blanc, plaquette, hémoglobine, ganglion lymphatique, rate.
• Nervous & endocrine: moelle épinière, neurone, nerf crânien, système sympathique / parasympathique / entérique, glande thyroïde, parathyroïde, pituitaire, pinéale, surrénale, hormone de croissance, œstrogène, progestérone.
• Respiratory, digestive, urinary, reproductive: trachée, bronche, alvéole, plèvre, diaphragme, muscles intercostaux, échange gazeux, œsophage, vésicule biliaire, intestin grêle, gros intestin, uretère, vessie, urètre, néphron, utérus, cavité thoracique / abdominale / pelvienne.

Two tips specific to this deck

Learn the medical cognates as a spelling pattern, not one by one. About 70 of the medical cards are near-identical in both languages (muscle → muscle, ligament → ligament, artère, capillaire, pancréas). Don't waste review time on them: instead learn the four recurring transformations — -um → -e (pericardium → péricarde), -y → -ie (histology → histologie), -ic → -ique (thoracic → thoracique), English y → French é (epiphysis → épiphyse) — and the whole group becomes predictable. Focus your effort on the genuinely different words: os, sang, cœur, poumon, foie, rein, rate, peau, moelle, vessie.

Attach a gender to every business noun on day one. Le siège social, la bourse, le seuil, la prime, le rachat, la devise. A gender learned late is a gender relearned; write it in the hint field the first time you see the card.

Suggested pace

Business first, 40 cards a day for 8 days; then medical by body system, one system per session (anatomical position and skeleton, then circulation, then nerves/endocrine, then the four remaining systems). After three weeks, let Flip It's spaced repetition take over.

Ready? Log in at flip-it.app and search EW2230 – French Business & Medical in your library. Also on the blog: French to Chinese: climb the 1000 most common Mandarin words if French is your starting language rather than your target.