Adverbs — building them with -ment

In one line

Make the adjective feminine and add -ment — and an adverb never changes, because a verb has no gender or number.

French -ment is English -ly, and they behave almost identically: slow → slowly, lent → lentement. The one extra step is that French builds it from the feminine form. Everything else about adverbs — that they describe a verb, that they never agree — works exactly as it does in English.

The forms on this page

The table

When the adjective ends in a vowel, no feminine is needed

If the masculine form already ends in a vowel, use it as it is:

Two other regular groups

Adjectives in -ant and -ent take a different suffix:

And both are pronounced the same: /amɑ̃/. constamment and récemment rhyme, even though one has an a and the other an e.

The exception in this group: lent → lentement (not lemment), because lent has a regular feminine.

Irregular adverbs

bon → bien is English good → well. Same pair, same irregularity, same reason: these are the oldest and most-used words in both languages. And the mistake French speakers make in English — "he works good" — is the mistake you will make in French: il travaille bon.

That last group follows a pattern: a few adjectives turn the feminine e into é. précisément · énormément · profondément · aveuglément.

Adverbs not built from adjectives

A large share of the common adverbs have no -ment and must be learnt separately:

vite is an adverb with no adjective of its own: the adjective is rapide. Il court vite but une voiture rapide. The form rapidement is also correct but more formal.

Adjectives used as adverbs

A few adjectives stand in for adverbs unchanged, and in that role they do not agree:

Note: Ces fleurs sentent bon — not bonnes, because here it is an adverb, not an adjective.

English does exactly this and with strikingly similar verbs: work hard, smell good, speak loud, cost dear. Those are adjectives doing adverb duty in English as well — which is why sentir bon sounds right the moment you stop translating it as "smell well".

Examples

Common mistakes

Where -ment came from