Back again for your weekly dose of French vocabulary? For this blog, we’ve chosen to take a deep dive into the word devant.
Listen to the audio clip below to hear how to pronounce it:
Let’s kick things off with the meaning of devant: it is usually translated in front (of), ahead, before or in (the) face of in English. But things might start to get a little tricky as we turn our attention to the grammar. Devant can be used as a preposition, an adverb, and a masculine noun. That said, its most common use by far is prepositional. Check out our Easy Learning French Grammar section on prepositions if you need a refresher on how they work.
As it’s the usage you’ll see the most often, we’ll take you through some examples involving the preposition first. Remember that you cannot end a sentence with a preposition in French:
Je t’attendrai devant l’église. I’ll wait for you in front of the church.
Ne dis pas des bêtises devant tout le monde. Don’t say silly things in front of everyone.
Il faut voir s’il dira la vérité devant le juge. We’ll see if he tells the truth before the judge.
Tout le monde est égal devant la loi. Everyone is equal before / in the face of the law.
avoir toute la vie devant soi to have your whole life ahead of you
Now we’ll cover some uses of devant as an adverb:
passer devant to go past
Tu peux lui voir droit devant. You can see him straight ahead of you.
Mes fils marchent trop vite… Ils sont déjà loin devant. My sons walk too fast… They’re already way ahead.
Arrêtez de courir devant ! Stop running ahead / away in front!
For the noun, the translation is usually more straightforward than for the other grammatical uses. It usually just means front. For example:
Le devant du bâtiment. The front of the building.
Le devant de la voiture. The front of the car.
Mon chien a du mal aux pattes de devant. My dog has pain in her front legs.
prendre les devants to take the first steps; to initiate
One final point about devant: in yet another grammatical category, you might also see it as a verb form – but it’s not the same word and doesn’t share the same meaning! By complete coincidence of being the same spelling, devant is the present participle of the verb devoir, meaning to have to – so in this case it means having to.
Well, that’s everything we’ve got to share on devant for now. We hope that you’ve managed to pick up the basics and feel comfortable adding this word to your roster – you’ve got plenty more French words ahead of you, so see you next week for our next instalment!
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.
