What are french words that start with ligatures?

I need as much of them as you can think of.

Thank you.

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Permalink Reply by lauris on May 23, 2011 at 2:05pm

I don't think that we use other ligatures in french words (without including foreign words, or greco-latin words) than the œ.

You can find here a list of words starting with œ :

http://fr.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Sp%C3%A9cial:Toutes_les_...

I think some of them are not french, some foreign words should be present in this list...

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on May 23, 2011 at 2:16pm

Essentially, these are any word beginning with "oe", as there is a typographical tradition still fairly common in French to write "oe" as a ligature. (Though this tradition is not so strong in Internet publications or e-mails.)

So:

- a handful of common words like "oeil", "oeuf", "oeuvre"

- related words: "oeillet", "oeuvé"...

- a few less common (mainly medical) words: "oesophage", "oedème", "oenologie"...

If you can find a word beginning with "ae" (but not "aé-"), then this could also be spelt with a ligature in principle. I can't think of such a word in French, though (e.g. "Aeneid" is spelt "Énéide" in French so wouldn't count).

In days gone by, you might have counted "st" as a ligature (which would give hundreds of words), but don't think many people would today.