Descendre: Full Verb Reference

Descendre is the verb to go down, to descend, to come down. It is a regular -dre verb in its conjugation (same template as vendre, rendre, perdre, attendre), but it carries a special grammatical feature that puts it in a much smaller club: it is one of the transitive-switch verbs of the maison d'être. When intransitive (je descends — I'm going down), it takes être. When you give it a direct object (j'ai descendu les valises — I brought down the suitcases), it switches to avoir and behaves like any normal transitive verb. This switch is the single most important thing to master about descendre.

This page is the verb-reference entry: every paradigm, the auxiliary switch in detail, the major uses (going down stairs, getting off a bus, staying at a hotel, dropping in price, dropping a person off in the colloquial sense), and the related verb redescendre.

The simple tenses

These are the tenses formed without an auxiliary. Descendre is conjugated identically to vendre, perdre, rendre, attendre across all simple tenses. The stem descend- is invariant.

Présent de l'indicatif

The standard regular -dre pattern: silent singular forms in writing (-s, -s, [bare stem with -d]), pronounced plurals.

The three singular forms are perfectly homophonous (/de.sɑ̃/) — both the -s and the -d are silent. The /d/ resurfaces audibly the moment a vowel-initial ending follows it (the -ons, -ez, -ent forms).

Imparfait

Built on the descend- stem with the regular imparfait endings.

Passé simple (literary)

Regular -is pattern. Note the circumflex on nous descendîmes and vous descendîtes — required in literary French.

Futur simple

Stem descendr- (drop the final -e of the infinitive), regular endings.

Conditionnel présent

Same descendr- stem with imparfait endings.

Subjonctif présent

Built on the descend- stem with standard endings.

Impératif

Three forms. As with all -re verbs, the tu imperative keeps its -s.

Participles and gérondif

• Participe passé: descendu (with être: agrees with subject — descendu, descendue, descendus, descendues; with avoir: agrees only with a preceding direct object)
• Participe présent: descendant
• Gérondif: en descendant

The auxiliary switch: être vs avoir

This is the central thing to understand about descendre, and it scales to its sister verbs monter, sortir, passer, rentrer, and retourner. The rule is mechanical:

• Intransitive (no direct object) → être. Je suis descendu = I went down.
• Transitive (with direct object) → avoir. J'ai descendu les valises = I brought the suitcases down.

The reasoning is that être in the maison d'être is reserved for verbs of motion or change of state where the subject itself is what moves. The moment descendre takes an object — a thing being moved — the focus shifts to that object, the subject becomes an active agent, and the verb behaves like any normal transitive verb. Therefore avoir.

Intransitive: être

The subject moves itself. Je / tu / il — whoever is the subject — is the thing going down.

The participle agrees with the subject: descendu(e)(s). Elle est descendue, ils sont descendus, elles sont descendues.

Transitive: avoir

When descendre takes a direct object — stairs, suitcases, a person, prices — it switches to avoir. The thing-being-descended is the object; the subject is the agent who acts on it.

With avoir, past participle agreement follows the standard rule — agree only with a preceding direct object:

A tricky case: descendre les escaliers

English speakers sometimes hesitate here because in English to go down the stairs is intransitive (the stairs is treated like a path, not an object). In French, les escaliers is the direct object of descendre, and the verb is transitive. So:

Not je suis descendu les escaliers — that mixes the auxiliary of an intransitive use with a direct object, which is incoherent. If you want to say "I went down by the stairs" without making them an object, you can use par:

Both are correct French; the first foregrounds les escaliers as the thing being descended, the second foregrounds the subject's motion with the stairs merely as the route.

The major uses

1. To go down / come down — physical descent

The literal sense. Both vertical movement (downstairs, down a hill) and the colloquial "going south" sense.

2. Descendre de — to get off / step down from a vehicle

When you exit a vehicle (bus, train, plane, taxi, car), French uses descendre de. Unlike English's to get off, this verb is fully spatial: you are coming down out of a higher / enclosed space.

The phrase vous descendez ? said on a crowded metro is one of the most useful sentences in spoken French — it asks whether the person blocking the doors is getting off, so you can position yourself appropriately.

3. Descendre en ville — to go into town

Idiomatic: French often uses descendre for going into the town center, regardless of whether there's any actual descent. The construction reflects an older spatial sense (the center of town was historically the lower / public ground) preserved in the verb.

4. Descendre à un hôtel — to stay at a hotel

A specifically French idiom: when you check into a hotel for a stay (especially while traveling), you descendre à that hotel. The construction comes from the era of stagecoaches, when travelers literally got down at an inn. It's still the natural verb for this in modern French.

This is purely a hotel-stay idiom; you would not use descendre for staying at a friend's place (use loger chez or rester chez).

5. Descendre quelque chose — to bring down, take down

The transitive use, requiring avoir in compound tenses. Direct object: the thing being moved down.

6. Descendre — to drop (price), to go down (value)

When prices, temperatures, levels, or values fall, descendre is the standard intransitive verb.

7. Descendre quelqu'un — colloquial: to take down / shoot / criticize harshly

Slang / colloquial. Has two related senses: literally to shoot someone (in detective fiction or news), or figuratively to crush them in a debate or review.

8. Descendre de — to be descended from

Used for ancestry / lineage. Always intransitive, takes être as auxiliary.

High-frequency idioms

• descendre en flammes — to shoot down (a project, an idea, a film)
• descendre dans la rue — to take to the streets (protest)
• descendre d'un cran — to come down a notch
• faire descendre quelqu'un — to call someone down (from upstairs)
• descendre une bouteille — to polish off a bottle (informal, of alcohol)
• ça descend bien — it goes down well (drink, food)

Related verbs: redescendre

Redescendre = to go back down, to come back down. Conjugated identically to descendre, with the same auxiliary switch (être intransitive, avoir transitive). The prefix re- adds the sense of repetition or return.

The pair monter / redescendre is extremely common in real-life narration of mundane up-and-down errands.

Comparison with English

Three friction points:

1. The être / avoir alternation has no English parallel. English uses have for all perfect tenses regardless of verb. I went down and I took the suitcases down both use have in the perfect: I have gone / I have taken. French sharply distinguishes: je suis descendue vs j'ai descendu les valises. Internalize the rule: object → avoir, no object → être.

2. English to get off maps to descendre de — a single verb, not a phrasal verb. French has no phrasal-verb structure of the get off / get on / get out type. Descendre du bus is the single, complete expression for to get off the bus.

3. The "stairs as object" pattern. English speakers often want to say je suis descendu les escaliers — combining intransitive auxiliary with a direct object. This is wrong on French ears. Either say j'ai descendu les escaliers (transitive: I went down the stairs as object) or je suis descendu par les escaliers (intransitive: I went down by way of the stairs).

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Using être when there is a direct object.

Mistake 2: Using avoir for the intransitive sense.

Mistake 3: Forgetting agreement with être.

Mistake 4: Using de when the destination follows.

Mistake 5: Using rester à un hôtel instead of descendre à un hôtel.

Key takeaways

Descendre is a regular -dre verb (same template as vendre, rendre, perdre) with a critical extra feature: it switches auxiliary depending on transitivity. Intransitive descendre (going down, coming down, getting off a vehicle) takes être, with subject agreement on the participle: je suis descendu(e). Transitive descendre (taking something down, bringing something down, descending a staircase as object) takes avoir, with the standard preceding-direct-object agreement: les valises que j'ai descendues.

The same auxiliary switch governs monter, sortir, passer, rentrer, and retourner — master it once and you have all five.

The most useful constructions: descendre de (get off a vehicle, also: be descended from), descendre en ville (go into town), descendre à un hôtel (stay at a hotel), and the figurative descendre les prix (drop prices) and descendre quelqu'un (take someone down, slang).

Above all: the rule "object → avoir, no object → être" is mechanical and never has exceptions for descendre. Once you internalize it, you can produce the right form without thinking.