French word of the week: rendre

Welcome back to our French word of the week blog. The word that we’re going to study today is the verb rendre.

As always, we’ll start with the pronunciation, which you can find an audio clip of below:

The verb rendre has a few different translations into English. As is often the case in French, it really depends on the context of where you’re using or hearing the verb. Its main translations sit within two categories:

1. rendre to give back; to return; to restore
2. rendre to make; to produce

In the second type of translation, you might be familiar with a similar English verb – ‘to render’. Sometimes you can even translate the French word using this term, so remembering this might help you to remember one of its meanings.

Now that you know what this verb means, let’s delve into some examples:

Il vous a rendu les clés hier. He gave the keys back to you yesterday.

J’aimerais bien rendre ton invitation. Es-tu disponible ce soir ? I’d really like to return your invitation. Are you free tonight?

La chirurgie oculaire au laser peut rendre la vue aux personnes qui souffrent de troubles de la vision. Laser eye surgery can give sight back to people who suffer with poor vision.

rendre la monnaie à quelqu’un to give someone change back (when purchasing something)

On a mangé les moules en vacances mais elles nous ont rendu malade. We ate mussels on holiday, but they made us sick.

Ce chien me rendra fou. Il n’arrête jamais à aboyer. This dog will make me go crazy. He never stops barking.

Il y a un problème avec ma guitare… elle rend des sons très bizarres. There’s a problem with my guitar… it’s producing some very bizarre sounds.

Ces nouvelles nous rendent très heureux ! This news makes us very happy!

rendre service à quelqu’un to do someone a favour; to help someone out

rendre visite à quelqu’un to visit someone; to pay someone a visit

Nous rendrons visite à mes parents ce week-end. We will visit my parents this weekend.

se rendre compte to realise; to become aware

Je me suis rendu compte que j’étais parti sans lui dire au revoir. I realised that I had left without saying goodbye to him.

If you’ve been learning French for a while, you might already know about the pattern for following the conjugation of regular -re verbs in French. Fortunately, as you’ve seen in the examples above, rendre fits into this regular pattern. If you want to see the whole thing, you can also take a look at our verb table for rendre.

Well done on enriching your French vocabulary with another new verb. We hope that this blog has made you understand how and when to use rendre. We hope that you’ll pay a visit to our blog 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.