Verbes avec -DRE

French Verbs with -DRE

Around 50 French verbs fall into a pattern commonly known as the "regular -re verbs" in many English-speaking grammar books.

In other text books, including French-speaking grammars, these verbs are classified as a variant of "verbs of the third group" or simply "group 3 verbs".

Although most French -RE verbs are not in fact regular, there is a pattern to many French verbs ending in -DRE.

Verbs in this pattern have a d throughout their spelling and a characteristic [d] sound everywhere except the singular present tense. They all have past participles ending in -u.

More specifically, -DRE verbs that follow this pattern include verbs whose infinitive ends with:

  1. -endre and -andre
  2. -ondre
  3. -erdre and -ordre

(Note that some common verbs ending in -DRE don't conjugate in this pattern and these are called irregular verbs. "Prendre" for example, despite ending in -endre, does not follow this pattern and is irregular. Additionally, verbs ending in -aindre, -eindre or -oudre do not follow this pattern, for example, "craindre" and "résoudre".)

Typical verbs that belong to this group are:

vendre to sell
défendre to prohibit, to defend
descendre to go/come down
dépendre de to depend on
entendre to hear
répandre to spread
attendre to wait
répondre to reply, to respond
correspondre to correspond
pondre to lay
fondre to melt
mordre to bite
tordre to twist
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