French word of the week: par

Welcome to the latest edition of our French word of the week blog. Today, we’re studying the word par.

Before we explain what it means and how you might use it, listen to the audio clip to hear how to pronounce par:

We normally advise against trying to work out the English meaning of French words from the spelling. In this case, you might be thinking about how it might relate to the golf term ‘par’. More on that later…

The French word par is most often used as a preposition. If you need a little refresher on how this part of speech works, head over to our Easy Learning French Grammar pages on how to use prepositions and the most common prepositions in French. Generally, par is translated by or per:

par by, per, with, through

Now it’s time to look at different examples using par:

par train by train

par avion by plane

Je vais à Paris par train, mais je passerai par Bruxelles pour y aller. I’m going to Paris by train, but I’ll go through Brussels to get there.

par terre on the ground

« Par où ? » « Par ici. » “Which way?” “This way.”

par contre on the other hand

par hasard by chance; by accident

On s’est rencontrés par hasard dans la rue. We met each other by chance in the street.

Mon frère préfère regarder par la fenêtre que faire ses devoirs… My brother prefers to look out of the window rather than do his homework…

Les billets les moins chers coûtent cinquante euros par personne. The cheapest tickets cost fifty euros per person.

Il faut pratiquer plusieurs fois par semaine. You need to practise several times a week/per week.

finir par faire quelque chose to end up doing something

Malheureusement, on a fini par regarder un autre film. Unfortunately, we ended up seeing another film.

commencer par faire quelque chose to start by / with doing something

Aujourd’hui, nous allons commencer par vous présenter nos nouveaux collègues. Today we’re going to start by introducing our new colleagues.

Now, just before we finish, remember the golfing term we referred to earlier? It turns out par is also the masculine noun for a ‘par’ in golf, just like we use it in English – well done if you guessed correctly there! That being said, the preposition usage of par will definitely appear much more frequently in everyday French.

So there you have it. Another week, another French word added to your vocabulary. If by any chance you found our blog useful, we’d love to see you here again 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.