With a new week comes a new French word! Are you ready to learn about the verb voler?
As usual, we’ll begin our word of the week blog by listening to the pronunciation:
First thing’s first, let’s get into the translation. The interesting thing about voler is that it has two very different and distinct meanings. Sometimes it means ‘to fly’, and at other times it means ‘to steal’. The trick with using and understanding this verb is to work out its meaning from the context of the phrase or sentence.
When it comes to grammar, voler follows the regular conjugation pattern for -er verbs. For more on this, head over to our Easy Learning French Grammar pages for the present indicative, present subjunctive and imperfect tense. Or if you haven’t quite got to grips with this yet, you can go directly to the full verb table for voler.
Let’s look at some examples of the word in action, in each of its distinct contexts. We’ll start with voler meaning ‘to fly’, which is intransitive. In other words, the verb does not need a direct object to make sense:
voler au vent to fly in the wind
Attention ! Ici les avions volent bas. Be careful! The planes fly low here.
En été, les jeunes oiseaux apprennent à voler.In summer, the young birds learn how to fly.
Nous y volerons en jet privé. We will fly there in a private jet.
Now we can look at voler meaning ‘to steal’, which can be either intransitive or transitive – it depends if you want to mention the object that the subject stole:
S’il continue à voler, il va finir par avoir affaire à la police. If he continues to steal, he’s going to end up having to deal with the police.
Quand ma sœur était jeune, elle volait tout le temps. When my sister was young, she used to steal all the time.
voler quelque chose à quelqu’un to steal something from someone
voler quelqu’un to rob someone
voler de l’argent to steal money
voler une voiture to steal a car
Elles m’ont volé le sac ! They’ve stolen my bag!
On lui volera son idée. We will steal his idea.
While you’re here, it’s also worth learning about the related masculine noun vol. As you might have guessed already, vol is simply the noun version of the two different verb translations we’ve covered:
vol (m) theft; robbery
vol (m) flight; flying
Il était victime d’un vol à la tire. He was a victim of pickpocketing.
À quelle heure part ton vol ? What time does your flight leave?
Congratulations on adding yet another word to your vocabulary. You’ll pass any French test with flying colours by learning a new word every week. And don’t forget that our blog is always free – what a steal!
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.
