Welcome back to all of our French language fans! The subject of this week’s blog is the verb perdre.
Before we get into what it means and how to use it, listen to its pronunciation in the audio clip below:
Moving onto its translation, perdre is fairly simple. While it only has two main translations, you’ll see in our examples that the verb has a truly enormous range of different phrases, uses and contexts. Perdre means ‘to lose’ or ‘to waste’. But you can use it both literally and metaphorically, which makes this verb very common in everyday French.
If you’ve already started to learn your verb tables, you should be pleased to hear that perdre follows the conjugation pattern for regular -re verbs in French.
Ready to look at some examples of perdre in use?
perdrequelque chose to lose something
perdreun procès to lose a (legal) trial
perdreson travail to lose your job
perdrel’équilibre to lose your balance
perdredu poids to lose weight
perdresept kilos to lose seven kilos
perdreun match to lose a match
perdreson père / sa mère / ses parents to lose your dad / mum / parents (usually in the sense of someone passing away)
J’ai perdu mon portefeuille dans le bus. I lost my wallet on the bus.
Les pilotes craignent que l’avion perde de l’altitude. The pilots are concerned that the plane is losing altitude.
Il perdra mille euros sur cet achat. He will lose a thousand euros on this purchase.
perdredu temps to waste time
faire perdre du temps to be a waste of time
faire perdre du temps à quelqu’un to waste someone’s time
C’est une chance à ne pas perdre ! It’s not an opportunity to be wasted!
On a perdu beaucoup de temps à cause des bêtises. We wasted a lot of time due to stupid things.
pain perdu French toast (the literal translation is ‘lost/wasted bread’)
Finally, it’s worth taking a quick look at the reflexive form of this verb before we wrap up:
se perdre to get lost; to be lost
C’est dommage que les traditions artisanales se perdent. It’s a shame that artisan traditions are being lost.
Ils se sont perdus après avoir oublié le plan de ville. They got lost after having forgotten the town map.
Thank you for reading this week’s blog on the verb perdre. We have a new word for you every week, so don’t lose out – improving your French vocabulary certainly isn’t a waste of time. See you soon!
