Every French compound tense — passé composé, plus-que-parfait, futur antérieur, conditionnel passé, subjonctif passé — is built the same way: take the auxiliary in some tense, then add the past participle. The auxiliary is either avoir or être, and choosing between them is one of the defining decisions of French verb grammar. Get it wrong and the sentence is ungrammatical; get it right and you've laid the foundation for every compound tense in the language.
The good news: the rule is almost binary. Default to avoir. Switch to être in a small, well-defined set of cases. This page lays out exactly what those cases are, the logic behind them, and the high-frequency trap where a normally-être verb takes a direct object and abruptly switches to avoir.
The default: avoir
Most verbs in French — nearly all of them — take avoir as their auxiliary. If you don't know the verb's history and you have no other information, your best bet is avoir.
J'ai mangé une pizza ce midi.
I ate a pizza at lunch.
Tu as travaillé hier soir ?
Did you work last night?
Elle a lu le roman en deux jours.
She read the novel in two days.
Nous avons attendu pendant une heure.
We waited for an hour.
Ils ont oublié leurs clés à la maison.
They forgot their keys at home.
Every transitive verb (one that takes a direct object) takes avoir. So do most intransitive verbs that don't involve motion or change of state. Verbs of speech (parler, dire, raconter), of perception (voir, entendre, sentir), of cognition (penser, croire, savoir), of action (faire, prendre, mettre), of consumption (manger, boire) — all avoir.
The exceptions: être
A verb takes être in three cases. We'll work through them in order of frequency.
Case 1: The maison d'être verbs
A small set of intransitive verbs — about seventeen — take être. These are the maison d'être (house of être), and they share a common semantic profile: they describe motion of the subject or a change of state of the subject.
The list is fixed. Memorize it. The traditional mnemonic is Dr. and Mrs. Vandertramp — see the dedicated page on the maison d'être mnemonic for the breakdown.
| Verb | Meaning | Type |
|---|---|---|
| aller | to go | motion |
| venir | to come | motion |
| arriver | to arrive | motion |
| partir | to leave | motion |
| entrer | to enter | motion |
| sortir | to go out | motion |
| monter | to go up | motion |
| descendre | to go down | motion |
| tomber | to fall | motion |
| passer | to pass / drop by (intransitive) | motion |
| retourner | to return | motion |
| rentrer | to go back home | motion |
| revenir | to come back | motion |
| devenir | to become | change of state |
| naître | to be born | change of state |
| mourir | to die | change of state |
| rester | to stay | state (no motion, no change) |
| apparaître | to appear | change of state (sometimes counted) |
Two semantic patterns dominate: motion of the subject through space (going up, down, in, out, away, back) and major change of state (being born, dying, becoming). The odd one out is rester — it expresses non-motion, not motion, but it joins the list because the maison d'être logic includes "deciding to stay where you are" as a legitimate parallel to deciding to leave.
Je suis allé au marché ce matin.
I went to the market this morning.
Mes parents sont arrivés à minuit.
My parents arrived at midnight.
Ma grand-mère est née en 1937 à Lyon.
My grandmother was born in 1937 in Lyon.
Je suis resté chez moi tout le week-end.
I stayed home all weekend.
Le poète Paul Éluard est mort en 1952.
The poet Paul Éluard died in 1952.
A crucial point: with être as auxiliary, the past participle agrees with the subject in gender and number — exactly like an adjective. So je suis allé (male speaker) but je suis allée (female speaker); mes parents sont arrivés (parents) but mes sœurs sont arrivées (sisters); ils sont sortis but elles sont sorties.
Case 2: All pronominal (reflexive) verbs
Every verb with a reflexive pronoun (me, te, se, nous, vous) takes être in compound tenses. This is absolute — there are no exceptions.
Je me suis levée à six heures.
I got up at six. (female speaker)
Tu t'es habillé rapidement.
You got dressed quickly.
Elle s'est endormie devant la télé.
She fell asleep in front of the TV.
Nous nous sommes promenés au parc.
We took a walk in the park.
Ils se sont rencontrés à Berlin.
They met each other in Berlin.
The pronominal class includes:
- True reflexives: the subject acts on itself — se laver (wash oneself), se regarder (look at oneself).
- Reciprocals: two or more subjects act on each other — se rencontrer (meet each other), se parler (talk to each other).
- Intrinsic pronominals: verbs that just happen to be pronominal in French, with no reflexive logic to translate — se souvenir (remember), s'évanouir (faint), se passer (happen).
- Pronominal passives: a passive-like construction with se — ce livre se vend bien (this book sells well).
All of them take être. The agreement rules for pronominal verbs are subtler than for plain être verbs — see agreement with être for pronominal verbs for the details.
Case 3: The passive voice
The passive voice in French is built with être + past participle, much as in English (the book was written by Camus). When the passive sits inside a compound tense, you get avoir été + past participle.
La maison est construite par eux.
The house is built by them. (present passive)
La maison a été construite en 1952.
The house was built in 1952. (passé composé passive: avoir été + construite)
Ce roman a été traduit dans vingt langues.
This novel has been translated into twenty languages.
The passive voice is technically a separate construction from the maison d'être or pronominal cases, but it shares the use of être and contributes to the impression that être is everywhere in French past tenses. Dedicated coverage lives at the passive voice.
The transitive switch: when "être verbs" go to avoir
Here is the trap that distinguishes intermediate from advanced learners. Some maison d'être verbs can take a direct object. When they do, the verb becomes transitive, the auxiliary switches to avoir, and the meaning shifts subtly from "self-motion" to "moving something else."
This is not a list of exceptions to memorize on top of the maison d'être list. It is a systematic pattern that follows from a deep principle: être marks the subject as the thing that changed location or state, while avoir marks the verb as having an external object that the subject acted upon.
The classic transitive-switch verbs are monter, descendre, sortir, rentrer, passer, retourner. Each has an intransitive (être) and a transitive (avoir) reading.
| Verb | Intransitive (être) | Transitive (avoir) |
|---|---|---|
| monter | Il est monté. (He went up.) | Il a monté l'escalier. (He climbed the staircase.) |
| descendre | Elle est descendue. (She went down.) | Elle a descendu les valises. (She brought the suitcases down.) |
| sortir | Je suis sortie. (I went out.) | J'ai sorti la poubelle. (I took out the trash.) |
| rentrer | Nous sommes rentrés. (We came home.) | Nous avons rentré la voiture. (We put the car away.) |
| passer | Il est passé chez moi. (He stopped by my place.) | J'ai passé une heure à étudier. (I spent an hour studying.) |
| retourner | Elle est retournée à Paris. (She returned to Paris.) | J'ai retourné l'omelette. (I flipped the omelet.) |
The same verb, the same past participle — but the auxiliary changes based on whether there is a direct object. This is the most important high-frequency learner trap in compound-tense French. See the dedicated page on the transitive switch for a deeper treatment, including the agreement consequences when a preceding direct object triggers participle agreement under the avoir rule.
Il est monté au troisième étage en ascenseur.
He went up to the third floor by elevator. (intransitive — être)
Il a monté les valises au troisième étage.
He took the suitcases up to the third floor. (transitive — avoir)
Elle est sortie hier soir.
She went out last night. (intransitive — être)
Elle a sorti son téléphone de son sac.
She took her phone out of her bag. (transitive — avoir)
The diagnostic: ask "is there a direct object?" If yes — auxiliary is avoir. If no — auxiliary stays at être.
Why is être used at all? A historical aside
The split between avoir and être in compound tenses descends from Latin. In Late Latin, the verb habere (have) was used as the perfect-tense auxiliary for transitive verbs (habeo factum = "I have done"), while esse (be) was used for intransitive change-of-state verbs (natus sum = "I am born / I have been born"). The semantic logic was: when the action affects an external object, you "have" it as a result; when the action transforms the subject, you "are" in the resulting state.
French inherited this distinction, and the two auxiliaries kept their separate roles. Italian still uses both auxiliaries similarly. Spanish and Portuguese mostly collapsed them into haber / haver, leaving only one auxiliary in modern use. So French is conservative on this point — it preserves a Latin distinction that other Romance languages have erased.
This explains why the maison d'être verbs cluster around motion and change of state: they're the verbs that historically took esse in Latin because the action transforms the subject's location or condition. It's not arbitrary; it's a fossilized semantic logic.
Pronominal verbs: why are they all être?
The blanket rule that all pronominal verbs take être feels arbitrary, but it has a clean explanation. A pronominal verb has the subject acting on itself (or on each other, or just being marked as the experiencer). In all of these cases, the action involves the subject as both agent and patient — the same role-merging that licenses être with the maison d'être verbs.
In other words: with a pronominal verb, the subject is always affected by the action. That subject-affecting nature is exactly what être marks. So the rule is consistent with the underlying logic, not a separate exception.
Source-language comparison
English uses have for every compound tense — I have eaten, I have gone, I have died, I have washed myself. There is no English equivalent of the être auxiliary, so the choice between avoir and être is foreign to anglophone instincts. The natural anglophone instinct is to use avoir for everything, because that maps onto English have.
This produces the most common transfer error: j'ai allé instead of je suis allé. The fix is rote memorization of the maison d'être list, plus the recognition that all pronominal verbs are être.
A second comparison worth noting: older English actually had a similar split. Middle English said "the king is come" (using be for motion verbs) alongside "I have eaten." This survived into early modern English (Christ is risen!, He is fallen), and traces of it linger in fixed expressions and high register. Modern standard English has consolidated everything onto have. So English speakers can think of French as preserving an older distinction that English mostly threw away.
Summary chart
| Verb type | Auxiliary | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Transitive verb (with direct object) | avoir | manger, voir, faire, prendre |
| Intransitive verb (most) | avoir | parler, dormir, marcher, travailler |
| Maison d'être verb (intransitive) | être | aller, venir, arriver, partir, naître, mourir |
| Maison d'être verb with direct object | avoir | monter l'escalier, descendre les valises, sortir la poubelle |
| Pronominal verb (reflexive, reciprocal, intrinsic) | être | se laver, se rencontrer, se souvenir |
| Passive voice | être | est construit, a été écrit |
Common Mistakes
Mistake 1: Using avoir with a maison d'être verb.
❌ J'ai allé au cinéma.
Incorrect — aller is on the maison d'être list and takes être.
✅ Je suis allé(e) au cinéma.
I went to the movies.
Mistake 2: Using avoir with a pronominal verb.
❌ Je m'ai levé à sept heures.
Incorrect — every pronominal verb takes être. The form is je me suis levé(e).
✅ Je me suis levé(e) à sept heures.
I got up at seven.
Mistake 3: Using être when a maison d'être verb has a direct object.
❌ Il est monté les valises au quatrième étage.
Incorrect — with the direct object les valises, monter switches to avoir.
✅ Il a monté les valises au quatrième étage.
He took the suitcases up to the fourth floor.
Mistake 4: Forgetting subject agreement with être verbs.
❌ Marie est allé à Paris.
Incorrect — with être, the past participle agrees with the subject. Feminine singular requires allée.
✅ Marie est allée à Paris.
Marie went to Paris.
Mistake 5: Treating partir and quitter as interchangeable.
❌ Il est quitté la maison.
Incorrect — quitter is transitive (it takes a direct object), so it uses avoir, not être.
✅ Il a quitté la maison.
He left the house.
✅ Il est parti.
He left. (intransitive partir uses être)
Mistake 6: Using être for verbs that look like motion but aren't on the list.
❌ Je suis voyagé en Italie.
Incorrect — voyager isn't on the maison d'être list. It uses avoir like most verbs: j'ai voyagé.
✅ J'ai voyagé en Italie l'été dernier.
I traveled to Italy last summer.
Key takeaways
The auxiliary in any French compound tense is avoir by default. Switch to être in three cases: (1) the maison d'être verbs of motion and change of state, (2) every pronominal verb, (3) the passive voice. Memorize the maison d'être list and learn to recognize when one of those verbs takes a direct object — at which point it switches to avoir and shifts meaning from self-motion to causing motion.
Past-participle agreement follows from auxiliary choice. With avoir, agree only with a preceding direct object. With être, agree with the subject in gender and number — exactly like an adjective. Get the auxiliary right first, and the agreement rules fall into their proper places.
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Start learning French→Related Topics
- DR & MRS VANDERTRAMP: the maison d'être mnemonicA1 — The classic memory aid for the seventeen French verbs that take être as their compound-tense auxiliary, organized as a fictional family with motion and state-change at its core.
- The transitive switch: when maison-d'être verbs take avoirB1 — A small set of French verbs — monter, descendre, sortir, rentrer, passer, retourner — flip from être to avoir whenever they take a direct object. Mastering this switch is what separates intermediate from advanced learners.
- Le Passé Composé: OverviewA1 — The passé composé is French's main spoken past tense — used for completed past events, formed with avoir or être plus a past participle. It does the work that English splits between simple past (I ate) and present perfect (I have eaten).
- Past participle agreement with avoirA2 — The rule that French native speakers themselves struggle with: when avoir-conjugated participles agree with a preceding direct object, and when they don't.
- L'Accord du Participe Passé avec ÊtreA2 — How to make the past participle agree with the subject when the auxiliary is être — gender, number, the masculine-default for mixed groups, the on-puzzle, and where the agreement is silent vs. audible.
- L'Accord du Participe Passé des Verbes PronominauxB1 — Pronominal verbs use *être* in compound tenses but follow a different agreement rule than other *être* verbs: the past participle agrees with the reflexive pronoun *only when that pronoun is the direct object*. Body-part constructions and verbs taking *à quelqu'un* are the trap.