Another week, another word for French learners! In this edition of our blog, we’re looking at the word debout.
To hear the correct pronunciation, you can listen to the audio clip below:
First things first, you need to know what this word means. While there isn’t exactly a direct English translation of debout, it’s usually translated as up, standing, upright or standing up, depending on context.
Debout is most commonly used as an adverb. For information on everything to do with adverbs, check out our Easy Learning French Grammar section on adverbs. However, debout is also used as an invariable adjective in French: this just means that it’s an adjective that never changes its spelling, no matter the subject or the noun. We’ll look at both grammatical categories in our examples below.
Let’s start by going through some examples of the invariable adjective in action. Remember, because it doesn’t follow the usual rules of adjectival agreement, debout never needs to change its spelling:
être debout to be standing; to stand; to be upright
Ça me fait rire quand notre chien est debout sur ses pattes de derrière. It makes me laugh when our dog stands up on her hind legs.
Vous êtes encore debout ?! Il est cinq heures du matin ! You’re all still up?! It’s five o’clock in the morning!
Now we’ll study examples of French phrases and sentences where debout is used as an adverb:
mettre quelque chose debout to stand something upright / up
ranger debout to arrange something upright / vertically
Est-ce tu peux m’aider à mettre cette armoire debout ? Elle est trop lourde. Can you help me to stand this wardrobe up? It’s too heavy.
Mets-toi debout ! Get up! / Stand up!
On devrait se mettre debout pour bien voir le spectacle. We should stand up so that we can properly see the show.
Il n’y avait pas assez de chaises, donc nous a mangé debout. There weren’t enough chairs, so we ate standing up.
Ces arbres ne resteront pas debout après la tempête ce soir. These trees will no longer be standing after this evening’s storm.
Ça ne tient pas debout. It doesn’t hold up (in terms of an argument, opinion, logic).
Congratulations on learning another French word. We know that language learning is a lot of work, so if you’re still standing after all your efforts, we’ll see you here again next week!
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.
