French word of the week: prêt

Welcome back to our weekly blog! Ready to add a new French word to your vocabulary? In this edition, we’ve chosen the word prêt.

Have a listen to its pronunciation in our audio clip:

Some readers might recognise this from the brand name of a well-known café chain, but have you ever wondered what it means? If you described something in the fridge as prêt-à-manger, it would translate as ‘ready to eat’. In high fashion, the term prêt-à-porter means ‘ready to wear’. So you’ve probably now guessed that prêt means ‘ready’ in English.

The word prêt is a worthwhile choice for our blog for several reasons, but mainly because it has two distinct grammatical functions. Firstly, it’s used as an adjective – a describing word. As most French adjectives change their spellings slightly to make them agree with the noun they’re describing, you might see any of the following variations:

  • Masculine singular – prêt
  • Feminine singular – prête
  • Masculine plural – prêts
  • Feminine plural – prêtes

It’s time to look at some examples of prêt as an adjective:

être prêt à [+ verbe à l’infinitif] to be ready to [+ verb infinitive]

Ces pommes de terre sont prêtes à cuire. These potatoes are ready to cook.

Venez à la cuisine s’il vous plaît, votre dîner est prêt. Come to the kitchen, please, your dinner is ready.

« Dépêchez-vous les filles ! » « Elles sont prêtes. On y va ? » “Hurry up, girls!” “They’re ready. Shall we go?”

Je serai prêt pour la réunion. I will be ready for the meeting.

Les gâteaux sont prêts, miam miam ! The cakes are ready, yum yum!

Hopefully we haven’t lulled you into a false sense of security with the first set of examples… Remember, we did mention earlier that this word serves more than one grammatical function. Prêt is also used as a masculine noun, and refers to a ‘loan’, or to financial ‘lending’. Let’s see how this might work with some examples:

un prêt sans intérêt an interest-free loan

Ils n’ont pas accepté son offre de prêt. They didn’t accept her loan offer.

Mon frère va solliciter plusieurs prêts bancaires. My brother is going to apply for multiple bank loans.

Lastly, you might be aware that we can sometimes take adjectives and nouns (just like prêt) to try and figure out translations for any related verbs. Knowing what prêt means, do you think you could take a guess at the meaning of the verb prêter?

prêter to lend; to give; to loan

Mes parents m’ont prêté leur voiture ce matin. My parents lent me their car this morning.

prêter l’oreille to lend an ear (in other words, to listen)

se prêter à quelque chose to lend itself to something

Ce jardin se prêterait bien aux grands arbres que je voulais planter. This garden would lend itself well to the big trees that I wanted to plant.

That’s all for now on the word prêt – will you be ready to take on another word next week? If so, we hope to see you then!

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.

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