Welcome back! In this edition of our French Word of the Week blog, we’re going to improve your vocabulary by looking at the ins and outs of the word dehors.
First of all, have a listen to its pronunciation in the audio clip below:
To translate dehors, it’s fairly simple – dehors means ‘outside’ or ‘outdoors’ in English. You might have worked this out this if you’re already quite knowledgeable about prepositions in French. You might notice that dehors seems to be made up of the prepositions de and hors, which mean ‘of/from’ and ‘out of’ respectively. When you put them together, the word dehors ends up as a word with two grammatical functions – it can be used as an adverb or a masculine noun.
Let’s start by looking some examples of the noun in action. As a masculine noun, you’ll often find it preceded by the articles le, un, du or au. It’s also commonly found alongside the preposition en:
au dehors outside (this can be either figurative or literal)
là dehors outside
de dehors from (the) outside
en dehors outside; outwards
en dehors de except from ; apart from ; aside from
en dehors des heures de cours / de travail outside of school/working hours
En dehors de sa famille, il n’y aura personne. Apart fromher family, there will be nobody there.
venir du dehors to come from outside
Nous n’avons pas entendu les bruits du dehors. We didn’t hear the noises (from) outside.
Je n’aime pas ni le dehors ni le dedans de cette maison. I like neither the outside nor the inside of this house.
Now we can switch over to its other function, as an adverb – remember this this is an adjective that describes what’s happening in relation to a verb:
attendre quelqu’un dehors to wait outside for someone
jeter dehors; mettre dehors to throw out
jeter quelqu’un dehors to throw someone out
Pourquoi tu restes dehors ? Il pleut ! Why are you staying outside? It’s raining!
« Où sont les enfants ? » « Je crois qu’ils jouent dehors. » “Where are the children?” “I think they’re playing outside.”
Nous n’allons pas déjeuner dehors cet après-midi. We’re not going to have lunch outside this afternoon.
Si vous voulez vous promener dehors, il faut partir avant dix-neuf heures. If you want to go for a walk outdoors, you need to leave before 7pm.
Thanks for reading our blog about dehors – keep reading and learning French outside of our weekly blogs to improve your vocabulary! See you next time.
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
