Faire is the workhorse of French idiom. It absorbs much of the conceptual labor that English distributes across do, make, take, go, play, and cause. A French speaker fait la cuisine (cooks), fait la queue (lines up), fait le ménage (cleans), fait du sport (exercises), fait attention (pays attention), fait la grasse matinée (sleeps in), and fait peur (scares). Master faire and you control a vast amount of everyday French.
This page collects the most useful faire-expressions, organized by the article pattern they take (la, le, du/de la, or none at all), and ends with the productive se faire family. Each entry explains the meaning, the structure, and includes a natural example. Several entries also include cultural notes — la grasse matinée and faire le pont aren't just vocabulary, they're windows into how French life is organized.
faire + la / le: the chore family
This is the biggest group: household tasks and routine activities, all taking a definite article.
faire la cuisine = cook (in general). Not "make THE cuisine"; the article marks "cooking" as a recognized activity.
Mon père fait la cuisine et ma mère s'occupe du jardin.
My father cooks and my mother takes care of the garden.
faire la vaisselle = do the dishes. After every French dinner, someone has to faire la vaisselle.
Je cuisine, donc tu fais la vaisselle, c'est la règle.
I cook, so you do the dishes, that's the rule.
faire le ménage = do the housework, clean the house. Note: ménage is the household, so this is "do the household."
On fait le ménage tous les samedis matin.
We clean the house every Saturday morning.
faire la lessive = do the laundry. Lessive originally meant the wash-water; now it's the laundry itself.
Tu peux faire la lessive ? Le panier déborde.
Can you do the laundry? The basket is overflowing.
faire la queue = stand in line, wait in line. La queue literally means "the tail."
On a fait la queue pendant une heure pour avoir des billets.
We waited in line for an hour to get tickets.
faire le lit = make the bed.
Mes enfants ne font jamais leur lit le matin.
My kids never make their bed in the morning.
faire les courses = do the shopping (especially for groceries, weekly errands). Distinct from faire du shopping (clothes, leisure).
Je passe au supermarché ce soir, j'ai des courses à faire.
I'm stopping by the supermarket tonight, I have shopping to do.
faire ses valises = pack one's bags. Note the possessive: it's always ses/mes/tes valises, not les valises.
Tu as fait tes valises ? L'avion décolle dans trois heures.
Have you packed? The plane takes off in three hours.
faire + du / de la: sports, leisure, music
The partitive article (du, de la, des) marks ongoing or quantified activities — typically sports, hobbies, and music.
faire du sport = exercise, play sports.
Depuis que je fais du sport, je dors beaucoup mieux.
Since I started exercising, I sleep much better.
faire de la musique / du piano / de la guitare = play music / piano / guitar (as a hobby or activity, not a one-off performance).
Ma fille fait du piano depuis l'âge de cinq ans.
My daughter has been playing piano since she was five.
faire du shopping = go shopping (especially for clothes, leisure). Borrowed from English, fully naturalized.
On fait du shopping samedi ? Il me faut des chaussures.
Want to go shopping Saturday? I need shoes.
faire de la randonnée = go hiking. faire du vélo = cycle. faire de la natation = swim.
On a fait de la randonnée toute la journée dans les Pyrénées.
We hiked all day in the Pyrenees.
faire + bare noun: idiomatic effort and abstraction
This group skips the article entirely. The bare noun signals a fully fossilized idiom, and the meaning is rarely literal.
faire attention (à) = pay attention to / be careful of.
Fais attention en traversant, les voitures vont vite ici.
Be careful crossing, the cars go fast here.
faire face à = face up to, confront.
L'entreprise doit faire face à une crise financière sérieuse.
The company has to face a serious financial crisis.
faire confiance à = trust (someone). Note the à — faire confiance à quelqu'un, never directly transitive.
Je lui fais entièrement confiance, on travaille ensemble depuis dix ans.
I completely trust her, we've worked together for ten years.
faire mal à = hurt (someone). The à introduces the person hurt.
Tu me fais mal au bras, lâche-moi !
You're hurting my arm, let go of me!
faire peur à = scare (someone).
Ne fais pas peur au chien, il est déjà nerveux.
Don't scare the dog, he's already nervous.
faire plaisir à = please / make happy. Often used to express gratitude or affection.
Ça m'a vraiment fait plaisir de te revoir hier.
It really made me happy to see you again yesterday.
faire rire (quelqu'un) = make (someone) laugh.
Il fait rire tout le bureau avec ses imitations.
He makes the whole office laugh with his impressions.
faire un effort = make an effort. (Note: with the indefinite article un; faire effort without article exists but is literary.)
Fais un effort, je sais que tu peux mieux faire.
Make an effort, I know you can do better.
faire semblant de + inf = pretend to.
Il fait semblant de dormir quand il ne veut pas répondre.
He pretends to be asleep when he doesn't want to answer.
faire de la peine à = cause sadness to / upset (someone). The partitive de la marks the emotional weight as a quantity transferred to the listener.
Ça me fait de la peine de te voir comme ça.
It saddens me to see you like this.
Causative faire: faire savoir, faire venir, faire faire
A productive use of faire is the causative: faire + infinitive means "have / cause / make someone do something." The grammatical pattern is technical (covered in detail on the verbs/causative/faire-causative page), but a few high-frequency lexicalized forms behave like fixed expressions and are worth learning as chunks.
faire savoir (à) = let (someone) know, inform.
Fais-moi savoir si tu peux venir samedi soir.
Let me know if you can come on Saturday evening.
Le directeur nous a fait savoir que la réunion était reportée.
The director let us know that the meeting was postponed.
faire venir = call / send for / have come over. Used for doctors, repair people, or summoning someone.
On a fait venir le plombier ce matin pour réparer la fuite.
We had the plumber come over this morning to fix the leak.
Si ça ne va pas, fais venir le médecin.
If you're not feeling well, send for the doctor.
faire faire (qch à qn) = have (something) done (by someone). The double faire is awkward in writing but extremely common in speech.
Je fais faire un costume sur mesure pour le mariage.
I'm having a custom suit made for the wedding.
Cultural idioms: la grasse matinée, faire le pont, faire la fête
Some faire-expressions are not just vocabulary but cultural institutions.
faire la grasse matinée = sleep in (literally "make the fat morning"). The image is of a long, lazy, indulgent morning. French speakers reach for this phrase often; English "sleep in" doesn't carry the same warmth.
Le dimanche, j'aime bien faire la grasse matinée jusqu'à onze heures.
On Sundays, I like to sleep in until eleven.
faire le pont = "make the bridge" — take an extra day off to bridge a public holiday and a weekend. If a holiday falls on Tuesday, French workers commonly take Monday off and font le pont into a four-day weekend. The institution is so embedded in French work culture that office calendars literally mark jours de pont in advance.
Le 1er mai tombe un jeudi cette année, donc on fait le pont vendredi.
May 1st falls on a Thursday this year, so we're taking Friday off too.
faire la fête = party, celebrate. Often plural: faire la fête toute la nuit.
Ils ont fait la fête jusqu'à cinq heures du matin pour son anniversaire.
They partied until five in the morning for her birthday.
faire la sieste = take a nap. The afternoon nap, especially in summer or in the south, is a recognized cultural pattern.
Mon grand-père fait la sieste tous les après-midis sans exception.
My grandfather naps every single afternoon without exception.
Impersonal weather: il fait + adjective/noun
French uses faire (not être) for nearly all weather descriptions. The subject is impersonal il, just like English "it."
Il fait beau aujourd'hui, on devrait sortir.
It's nice out today, we should go out.
Il faisait tellement froid hier que les fontaines ont gelé.
It was so cold yesterday that the fountains froze.
The most common: il fait beau (nice), il fait mauvais (bad weather), il fait chaud (hot), il fait froid (cold), il fait frais (cool), il fait doux (mild), il fait nuit (it's dark / nighttime), il fait jour (it's daytime / light out).
se faire: get / become / arrange
The pronominal se faire opens a huge productive territory. The basic meaning is "get oneself X" or "have X happen to oneself."
se faire + adjective = become / get (a state).
Je me fais vieille, je n'arrive plus à courir comme avant.
I'm getting old, I can't run like I used to.
se faire + infinitive = have something done to oneself (passive-causative).
Elle s'est fait couper les cheveux ce matin.
She got her hair cut this morning.
se faire mal = hurt oneself (the reflexive of faire mal).
Je me suis fait mal au genou en jouant au foot hier.
I hurt my knee playing soccer yesterday.
ça se fait / ça ne se fait pas = it's done / it's not done (socially acceptable).
Tutoyer son patron au premier jour, ça ne se fait pas.
Using *tu* with your boss on day one — that's not done.
The se faire family expands further (se faire à = get used to, s'en faire = worry, se la faire belle = take it easy). Many of these are covered on expressions/se-faire-idiomatic.
Common Mistakes
❌ Je joue piano.
Incorrect — to play piano as an activity, French uses *faire du piano*, not *jouer*.
✅ Je fais du piano.
I play piano.
❌ Je fais attention de la voiture.
Incorrect — *faire attention* takes *à*, not *de*.
✅ Je fais attention à la voiture.
I'm watching out for the car.
❌ Il est chaud aujourd'hui.
Incorrect — for weather use impersonal *il fait chaud*; *il est chaud* describes a person and is colloquially loaded.
✅ Il fait chaud aujourd'hui.
It's hot today.
❌ Je fais confiance Marie.
Incorrect — *faire confiance* requires *à* before the person.
✅ Je fais confiance à Marie.
I trust Marie.
❌ Je fais le shopping.
Incorrect — for shopping as a leisure activity, the partitive *du* is required: *faire du shopping*.
✅ Je fais du shopping.
I'm going shopping.
❌ Je fais ménage.
Incorrect — household chores require the definite article: *faire le ménage*.
✅ Je fais le ménage.
I'm doing the housework.
The recurring lesson: faire doesn't translate cleanly to a single English verb, and the article it pairs with is part of the idiom. Learn each expression as a frozen unit. Once you've internalized fifteen or twenty of these chunks, the pattern starts feeling natural and you'll begin to recognize the article rules without conscious effort.
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Start learning French→Related Topics
- Les Expressions Idiomatiques: OverviewB1 — How French builds everyday meaning from fixed verb-plus-noun collocations with avoir, faire, être, and prendre — and why the article disappears.
- Expressions avec AvoirA2 — How French uses avoir — not être — for hunger, thirst, age, fear, need, and dozens of other physical and mental states. The bare-noun pattern explained, with the full inventory.
- Expressions avec ÊtreA2 — How French uses être with prepositions to mark progressive aspect, imminent action, location-states, and dozens of conditions and attitudes — with the rules that govern agreement and prepositions.
- Expressions avec PrendreB1 — From taking the metro to taking one's time to catching a cold — the full inventory of French expressions with prendre, including idiomatic uses with se prendre.
- Idiomes avec Se FaireB2 — The full repertoire of se faire constructions — passive causative (se faire couper les cheveux), gradual change (se faire vieux), getting tricked or hurt, and the everyday s'en faire (worry). One verb, eight different idiomatic patterns.
- Le Causatif avec FaireB1 — The causative faire + infinitive lets one verb express English 'have someone do,' 'make someone do,' and 'get something done.' Master the agent marking with à and par, the rigid pronoun ordering, and the invariable past participle.