plouve (Walloon)

Where does "plouve" come from?

The Walloon noun 'plouve', meaning 'rain', developed from a regional variant form of Old French 'pluie'[1]. This term can be traced back to Vulgar Latin '*plovia'[1], which arose from Classical Latin 'pluvia' with its stressed vowel influenced by the spoken verb '*plŏvĕre', meaning 'to rain'[4]. In Latin, 'pluvia' originated as a noun by shortening the phrase 'tempestās pluvia', meaning 'rainy weather', which in turn derived from the adjective 'pluvius', meaning 'rainy'[2].

Open questions

• The intermediate Vulgar Latin ancestor '*plovia' is an unattested, reconstructed form. [1] [3] [4]

Full etymology tree

• plouve (Walloon), 'rain'
  • inherited pluie (Old French), 'rain'
    • inherited *plovia (Latin), 'rain'
      • derived pluvia (Latin), 'rain'
        • clipping tempestās pluvia (Latin)
          • compound pluvius (Latin), 'rainy, bringing rain'
            • derived pluit (Latin), 'to rain; to be raining'
      • influenced by *plovere (Latin), 'rain'

Ancestors

• pluie (Old French)
• pluvia (Latin)

Sources

1. plouve (Walloon) - Wiktionary
2. pluvia (Latin) - Wiktionary
3. pluie (Old French) - Wiktionary
4. plovia (Latin) - Wiktionary
5. pluvius (Latin) - Wiktionary

Updated September 2026

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Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris