Welcome back to another instalment of Collins’ French Word of the Week blog. This time, we’re going against the grain slightly by looking at two different words – gratuit and libre.
Take a listen to our audio clips for the pronunciation of each word – first, the pronunciation of gratuit:
And secondly, libre:
The reason why we’ve chosen two words this week is because of the overlap in their translations. While they both translate into English as free, the similarities pretty much end there – each of their meanings and usages are quite different. We’ll look at each word separately before seeing all sorts of different examples.
Gratuit means free as in ‘complimentary’ or ‘without any cost’. As an adjective, you use gratuit to describe a noun. Most French adjectives also have alternate spellings to make them agree with the noun they’re describing. This means you might see gratuit as the masculine singular but also in these forms:
- Feminine singular: gratuite
- Masculine plural: gratuits
- Feminine plural: gratuites
Libre means free as in someone ‘having liberty/being liberated’ or as in an item being ‘vacant’ or ‘not being used’. You’ll be glad to hear that this is also an adjective, plus in this case you don’t need to learn any other spellings except its plural form libres.
Now that we’ve explained the two different senses of ‘free’ that you might need to deal with in French, let’s take a look at some examples of each:
Il faut aller plus loin pour trouver des places de parking gratuites. You’ll need to go further away to find free parking. (as in, parking that you don’t need to pay for)
Il n’y a plus des places libres sur le parking. There aren’t any more free spaces in the car park. (as in, parking spaces available to use)
Voulez-vous un billet gratuit ? Would you like a free ticket?
Avez-vous une chambre de libre ? Do you have any vacant/free rooms?
After seeing how each word might work in sentences in comparison, it’s also worth knowing some common set phrases and other words you might see them alongside:
appel (m) gratuit freephone
entrée (f) gratuite free entrance
à titre (m) gratuit free of charge
accusation (f) gratuite unwarranted/groundless accusation
acte (m) gratuit action without motive or reason
être libre de faire… to be free to do…
économie (f) libre free economy
esprit (m) libre free spirit
en vente libre over-the-counter service
en libre-service self-service (when buying something)
temps (m) libre free time/spare time
We hope that you enjoyed this week’s blog, even though we took a little liberty by choosing two words instead of one! But hopefully it’s been useful to learn about the distinction between gratuit and libre. Feel free to join us here next week for another word!
Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
