A warm welcome to all French learners, it’s time for our word of the week. For this edition of our weekly blog, we’re looking at the word peur.
You can listen to its pronunciation by using the audio clip below:
Now you know what it sounds like, we can move on to understanding what it means. Peur is a simple word with pretty much one single English translation – ‘fear’. Within this topic, you’ll find peur in all sorts of set phrases as a feminine noun, but you’ll also see in our examples how it seems to function like an adjective in English. But don’t let that scare you… you know there will always be some complexities with French words of the week!
In everyday French, you might encounter peur in a number of ways as a simple noun:
peur du noir fear of the dark
peur des serpents fear of snakes
être pris de peur to be overcome by fear
de peur de / que for fear of / that
sans peur fearless
Les histoires de fantômes me font trembler de peur. Ghost stories make me tremble with fear.
However, when peur is used alongside certain verbs, it translates into certain adjectives in English. Rather than its translation being the noun ‘fear’, it becomes ‘afraid’, ‘scared’ or ‘scary’. But nothing changes in terms of grammar in French, it’s just the way we’d naturally translate the meaning in English.
Let’s look at some examples:
avoir peur to be afraid/scared (Note that rather than the verb être for ‘to be’, in French we use the verb avoir for ‘to have’. The literal translation here is ‘to have fear’.)
avoir peur de quelque chose to be afraid of something
Tu n’as pas peur d’y aller tout seul ? Are you not scared of going there all alone?
faire peur à quelqu’un to make someone afraid; to scare someone
Je ne voudrais jamais vous faire peur. I would never want to make you afraid.
Les araignées me font peur. Spiders scare me.
Ça fait peur ! It’s scary!
Finally, a point on grammar. If you use the construction avoir peur que (‘to be afraid that’), you’ll need to follow with verbs in the subjunctive. For example:
J’ai peur qu’il ne parte pas. I’m afraid that he won’t leave.
Nous avons peur que vous sachiez la vérité. We’re scared that you know the truth.
For more information, visit out French Easy Learning Grammar section on using the subjunctive.
Thank you for reading our blog about peur. We hope this edition didn’t scare you off! Every week, we’ll have a new word for you to study in detail, so don’t be afraid to come back 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.
