Welcome once again to our French word of the week blog. In this edition, we’re going to tell you all the need-to-know details about tomber.
You can listen to its pronunciation in the audio clip below:
It’s perfectly natural to try and work out the meaning of French words by looking for similarities to English words… but that doesn’t mean it always works! This word has little to do with a ‘tomb’ – instead, it’s a verb meaning ‘to fall’. While this might sound quite limited in terms of how often we use this in English, it’s extremely versatile and common as a verb in French.
Grammar-wise, you should be pleased to know that tomber follows almost an entirely regular conjugation pattern for -er verbs. If you’d like some more details, visit our Easy Learning French Grammar section all about verbs.
The irregular point about tomber is that it takes être rather than avoir in compound tenses. Only a small group of French verbs do this, but it’s important to make this distinction when using tenses like the perfect or pluperfect.
Shall we take a look at some examples in action? Tomber is most commonly used intransitively, which means it doesn’t need a direct object for whatever is ‘falling’ – the subject is doing the action of ‘falling’:
J’ai peur qu’ils tombent à l’eau ! I’m scared that they’ll fall in the water!
Toutes les feuilles tomberont en automne. All of the leaves will fall in autumn.
Quand ma grand-mère est tombée d’une échelle, elle s’est cassée le dos. When my grandmother fell off a ladder, she broke her back.
Cette année, son anniversaire tombe un samedi. This year, his birthday falls on a Saturday.
Ça tombe bien/mal. That’s good/bad timing.
tomber en panne to break down
Notre voiture était tombée en panne la semaine dernière. Our car had broken down the week before.
tomber malade to fall ill; to become ill
tomber par terre to fall down (on the ground)
tomber amoureux/amoureuse to fall in love
tomber de sommeil ou fatigue to be exhausted/to fall asleep from exhaustion
tomber enceinte to fall pregnant
tomber sur quelqu’un to run into somebody (as in, a chance meeting)
faire tomber quelque chose to drop something; to let something fall
laisser tomber to abandon; to give up or to let something go; to drop something (figurately or literally)
Je pense à laisser tomber la guitare. I’m thinking about giving up guitar.
« Qu’est-ce que tu as dit ? » « Rien! Laisse tomber. » “What did you say?” “Nothing! Drop it.”
Your journey to learning French might feel difficult sometimes, but the most important thing is not to fall out of practice! We’ll have another blog for you here next week to make sure you stay on form.
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.
