French word of the week: cas

Every week, French learners come to our blog to learn the ins and outs of a new word. This time we’re looking at the noun cas. Listen to the pronunciation in our audio clip below:

While this word doesn’t quite sound like any English words, the spelling is not far off its main translation. Simply by adding the letter ‘e’ on the end, we arrive at the English word ‘case’ – the most common translation of the French word cas. While we don’t often recommend it, the strategy of finding similar English words sometimes works in your favour to help you remember the meaning.

The word cas is a masculine noun, which means the articles you might see preceding it are un or le. It doesn’t change spelling for plural either, as the word already ends in ‘s’. We’re about to delve into some examples, but if you’d like a refresher on nouns, head over to our Easy Learning French Grammar section.

Although we’ve only mentioned one specific translation so far, you can use and translate cas in many different ways. It’s also important to note that cas does not mean a physical case, such as a briefcase or a vessel to hold something, but rather the more figurative use of case. We’ll look at a whole range of examples below to illustrate possible translations:

en tout cas… in any case/event…

faire grand cas de… to have a big interest/attachment in/to…

ne faire aucun cas de… to have zero interest in…

en cas que… if…; in the event that…

cas par cas (on a) case by case (basis)

une étude de cas a case study

dans le meilleur des cas in the best-case scenario

au cas où just in case

Je vais donner les clés à ta sœur au cas où. I am going to give the keys to your sister, just in case.

Ils n’ont pas encore trouvé de résolution… c’est un cas très particulier. They haven’t yet found a solution…it’s a very special case.

Dans la plupart des cas, les sondages étaient moitié-moitié. In most cases, the surveys were fifty-fifty.

Il y avait plusieurs cas de coronavirus le mois dernier. There were several cases of coronavirus last month.

Vishnu est venu nous expliquer son cas. Vishnu came to explain his situation to us.

Que feriez-vous dans mon cas ? What would you do in my situation?

C’est (bien) le cas de le dire. You can say that again; You can certainly say that.

Are you feeling a little more confident in your French vocabulary yet? We hope it’s the case that you’ve learned a new word and enjoyed doing so! See you next week.

Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.

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