French Prepositions: Overview

Prepositions are the small connective words that tell you where something is, when it happens, how it is done, why it is done, and with what or for whom. In English they are words like to, at, in, on, of, from, with, without, before, after. French has its own set, and although many of them look like one-to-one translations, the mapping is rarely tidy. A single French preposition often covers several English ones, and a single English preposition often splits into several French ones depending on context. The most heavily used preposition in the language, à, can mean to, at, in, by, of, with, or for depending on what follows it.

This page gives you the architecture. It surveys the prepositions by function — place, time, manner, cause, purpose — and introduces the one piece of mechanical grammar you cannot avoid from day one: the obligatory contractions au, aux, du, des. Each section below points to a dedicated page where you can dig deeper.

What a French preposition does

A preposition links a noun phrase or a pronoun to the rest of the sentence. The noun phrase that follows it is the object of the preposition. Unlike adjectives or determiners, prepositions never agree, never inflect, and never change form for gender or number — with a single exception, the contractions, which we cover below.

Five prepositions in one sentence: à (destination), en (means of transport), avec (accompaniment), pour (purpose), and an implicit time reference. This compactness is typical. French sentences string prepositions together as casually as English ones do.

Prepositions of place

French uses different prepositions for inside versus on top of versus next to, and — distinctively — different prepositions for at a city versus in a feminine country versus in a masculine country. The system feels finicky at first because English collapses many of these distinctions into a single in or at.

The core place prepositions, with their primary meanings:

The trickiest distinction here for English speakers is between à, dans, and en, all of which can translate as in. The short version: à for general location and cities, dans for inside an enclosed or specific space, en for feminine countries and abstract domains. See Dans, en, au for the full picture.

Prepositions of time

French time prepositions distinguish a precise point in time from a duration, a starting point from a window of time, and a future moment from elapsed time. Each preposition has a narrow job.

The pair dans (future-from-now) versus en (within-a-duration) is a classic trap. Je finis dans deux heures means I'll finish two hours from now; je le finis en deux heures means I can finish it within two hours of work. Different worlds.

Prepositions of manner

Manner prepositions tell you how something is done — by what means, with what tool, in what style.

• avec — with (accompaniment, instrument): avec un couteau, avec ma sœur
• sans — without: sans sucre, sans toi
• par — by (means, agent of passive): par avion, par cœur, par la fenêtre
• en — in (a language, a state, a means of transport): en français, en colère, en voiture
• à — by, on (manual or self-powered means): à pied, à vélo, à la main

The split between en and à for transport is worth memorizing once: if you sit inside the vehicle (train, voiture, avion, bus), use en; if you sit on it or use your own body (vélo, pied, cheval, moto — though moto now also accepts en), use à. En vélo is now widely accepted in spoken French, but à vélo remains the standard.

Prepositions of cause and purpose

These two functions are often confused, but in French they use different prepositions.

Cause answers why? by pointing to a reason that produced the situation:

• à cause de — because of (often negative or neutral): à cause de la pluie (because of the rain — and the rain is unwelcome)
• grâce à — thanks to (positive credit): grâce à toi (thanks to you)
• en raison de — due to (formal, neutral): en raison du mauvais temps

Purpose answers why? by pointing to a goal:

• pour — for, in order to: pour réussir (in order to succeed)
• afin de — in order to (more formal): afin de comprendre
• de manière à — so as to: de manière à éviter les problèmes

The à cause de / grâce à split is genuinely lexicalised: French grammarians and stylebooks insist that à cause de should signal a negative or neutral cause, while grâce à is reserved for credit and gratitude. Saying grâce au cancer, j'ai compris la vie would sound either tasteless or sarcastic.

The contractions you cannot avoid

This is where French stops being optional and starts being mandatory. When the prepositions à and de meet the masculine singular definite article le or the plural les, they must contract. Refusing to contract is not a stylistic choice — it is ungrammatical.

The contractions are blind to meaning. Au covers to the, at the, and in the indifferently — the preposition à keeps all of its many meanings, and the contraction is purely a phonological merger with the article. The same goes for du and des: they can mean of the / from the / some, depending on whether de is partitive, possessive, or simply directional.

Notice in that last example how des appears twice in different meanings: first as the contraction de + les in parler de (to talk about), then again as de + les in les problèmes des étudiants (the problems of the students). Both are forced by the same rule.

For the full mechanics — including how to avoid the most common mistakes — see The Contractions au, aux, du, des.

Prepositions and verbs

A large slice of French preposition use is fixed by the verb. Many verbs require a specific preposition before their complement, and the choice — à, de, or no preposition at all — must be memorized lexically.

Commencer takes à, oublier takes de, vouloir takes nothing. There is no logical shortcut — these patterns are lexical facts. See À vs De with verbs for the most common pairings.

Common Mistakes

These are the errors English speakers make most often. Each pair shows the wrong form first and the correct form second.

Key takeaways

• Prepositions are invariable except for the four mandatory contractions: à + le = au, à + les = aux, de + le = du, de + les = des.
• À and de are the two workhorses — between them they cover dozens of meanings, so each gets its own dedicated page.
• For in, French splits the work three ways: à (general/cities), dans (enclosed/specific), en (countries fem./abstract).
• For for with time, French splits the work three ways: pendant (completed past), depuis (ongoing), pour (intended).
• Cause uses à cause de (negative/neutral) versus grâce à (positive); purpose uses pour and afin de.
• Many verbs require a specific preposition before a following infinitive — that choice is lexical and must be memorized verb by verb.