While exploring French readability and the fact that sentence length is a key factor for English speakers learning French, I thought I’d take it to the extreme and see what are the most common one-word sentences in French literature. Here is the top 20. Note that it is highly influenced by Les Trois Mousquetaires, which is a sizeable portion of the corpus and responsible for about half the occurrences of “diable”.

1. Ah
2. Oh
3. Non
4. Hélas
5. Oui
6. Quoi
7. Eh
8. Comment
9. Pourquoi
10. Diable
11. Bah
12. Tiens
13. Amen
14. Moi
15. Bon
16. Vraiment
17. Monsieur
18. Jamais
19. Pardieu
20. Hé

In a different corpus less dominated by Les Trois Mousquetaires, the following were also found in the top 20:

• Allons
• Bien
• Adieu
• Rien
• Jamais

In a modern corpus I think we would find different expletive-like exclamations than “Diable”, “Parbleu”, and “Pardieu”. A common one these days seems to be “Putain!”, or somewhat less extreme “Punaise!”. Maybe I’ll try to process the French movie subtitle corpus at some point to get a more up to date glimpse at one-word sentences in French.