42 in French
quarante-deux
Spellings verified June 2026 · page updated 2 October 2026
A regular forty-two, and Douglas Adams's answer to everything
“Forty-two in French” is quarante-deux, the number 42. Hear it spoken below.
NUMERAL
42
FRENCH
quarante-deux
IPA
/ka.ʁɑ̃t.dø/
Breakdown
Ordinal form
Ranking things rather than counting them: 42 becomes quarante-deuxième, written 42e in figures.
MASCULINE
quarante-deuxième
42e
FEMININE
quarante-deuxième
42e (same word as the masculine)
French writes the abbreviation with a plain e, never ème: 42e. The Académie française allows two irregular pairs: premier and première abbreviate 1er and 1re, and second and seconde abbreviate 2d and 2de. Full rules on the ordinal numbers reference.
Counting around 42
Real sentence examples
“Elle a quarante-deux ans.”
“Le bus quarante-deux s'arrête devant la gare.”
“La réponse à la grande question est quarante-deux.”
Pronunciation and morphology notes
Quarante-deux is quarante (40) plus deux (2), hyphenated with no "et" connector. The "et" appears only on the unit 1, so 41 is quarante et un, but 42 through 49 are all hyphenated: quarante-deux, quarante-trois, and so on. The word is identical in France, Belgium and Switzerland, because the septante / huitante / nonante split only touches 70, 80 and 90. Forty-two enjoys a cult following thanks to Douglas Adams: in the French edition, Le Guide du voyageur galactique, the answer the supercomputer Pensées Profondes gives to "la grande question sur la vie, l'univers et le reste" (the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything) is quarante-deux.
Frequently asked questions
How do you say forty-two (42) in French?
Forty-two in French is "quarante-deux" (the number 42). It is built as 40 + 2 = 42.
How is quarante-deux (42) pronounced in French?
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, "quarante-deux" is transcribed /ka.ʁɑ̃t.dø/. Use the audio button on this page to hear the standard French pronunciation.
What is the ordinal form of 42 in French?
The ordinal for 42 is "quarante-deuxième", abbreviated 42e. The form is the same in the masculine and the feminine.
How is 42 used in a French sentence?
A natural example is: "Elle a quarante-deux ans."
Related numbers
Want to convert another number, or hear it spoken in Belgium / Swiss French?