A French verb is transitive if it takes a direct object, intransitive if it doesn't. Manger is transitive: you eat something (je mange une pomme). Dormir is intransitive: you just sleep (je dors). On the surface this distinction looks simple — and in many languages it would be. In French it is one of the most consequential pieces of information about a verb you can know, because it decides three things at once: the auxiliary you choose for compound tenses, whether the past participle agrees, and whether you need a preposition before the object.
This page sets out the distinction and the structural consequences. Two warnings up front. First, French and English do not divide their verbs along the same lines: many verbs that are transitive in English are intransitive in French (and vice versa), and getting that wrong is the source of dozens of recurring errors. Second, a number of high-frequency verbs are both transitive and intransitive — and which one you mean changes the auxiliary in the passé composé, sometimes flipping the meaning entirely.
The basic distinction
A direct object is a noun phrase that completes the verb without any preposition. In French as in English, you can usually find it by asking quoi ? (what?) or qui ? (whom?) right after the verb.
Marie achète un livre.
Marie is buying a book.
Marie achète quoi ? → un livre. That's the direct object. Acheter is transitive.
Le bébé dort enfin.
The baby is finally sleeping.
You can't ask le bébé dort quoi ? and get a sensible answer. Dormir is intransitive — it has no direct object slot.
Some verbs require an indirect object, marked by a preposition (usually à or de). These are still considered intransitive in the strict French grammatical tradition, because the preposition disqualifies the object from being "direct":
Je téléphone à mes parents le dimanche.
I call my parents on Sundays.
Téléphoner is intransitive even though it has an "object" in English terms — the à makes the relationship indirect. This will matter when we look at compound-tense agreement and pronoun replacement.
Why transitivity matters: the auxiliary consequence
Most French verbs form their compound tenses (passé composé, plus-que-parfait, futur antérieur, etc.) with the auxiliary avoir + past participle:
J'ai mangé une pizza hier soir.
I ate a pizza last night.
Tu as fini ton travail ?
Have you finished your work?
But a closed list of about seventeen intransitive verbs takes être instead. These are the verbs of the maison d'être — verbs of motion and change of state — plus all pronominal (reflexive) verbs:
- Motion / direction: aller, venir, arriver, partir, entrer, sortir, monter, descendre, retourner, tomber, passer (sometimes), rentrer, revenir
- Change of state: naître, mourir, devenir, rester, apparaître
Marie est arrivée à Paris hier soir.
Marie arrived in Paris last night.
Mes grands-parents sont nés en Bretagne.
My grandparents were born in Brittany.
What unites these verbs is precisely their intransitivity: none of them take a direct object in their basic meaning. Aller (to go), venir (to come), naître (to be born), mourir (to die) — there is nothing to go or come in the direct-object sense. This is not a coincidence; it is the underlying logic of être-selection.
Same verb, two auxiliaries: the pivot verbs
This is the high-stakes part. Six verbs from the maison d'être can be used transitively as well — and when they are, they take avoir, not être. The participle agrees differently, and the meaning changes. The six verbs are monter, descendre, sortir, entrer, retourner, passer.
sortir — to go out / to take out
Je suis sorti vers vingt heures hier soir.
I went out around eight last night. (intransitive — être)
J'ai sorti la poubelle ce matin.
I took out the trash this morning. (transitive — avoir)
The intransitive sortir means "to leave a place." The transitive sortir means "to take/get something out of a place." Both are perfectly natural; the auxiliary tells you which.
monter — to go up / to take up / to climb
Elle est montée au troisième étage.
She went up to the fourth floor. (intransitive — être)
Elle a monté les bagages dans la chambre.
She brought the luggage up to the room. (transitive — avoir)
Il a monté l'escalier en courant.
He ran up the stairs. (transitive — avoir)
That last example deserves attention: monter l'escalier (to climb the stairs) is transitive in French — l'escalier is the direct object, the thing being climbed. So even what feels like a "motion verb" in English uses avoir when there's a thing being moved (or moved over).
descendre — mirror image of monter
Nous sommes descendus à pied.
We went down on foot. (intransitive — être)
Nous avons descendu les valises.
We brought the suitcases down. (transitive — avoir)
passer — to go past / to spend (time) / to pass (something)
Je suis passé chez Paul ce matin.
I dropped by Paul's place this morning. (intransitive — être)
J'ai passé deux heures à l'aéroport.
I spent two hours at the airport. (transitive — avoir)
Tu peux me passer le sel ?
Could you pass me the salt? (transitive — avoir)
The shift is most dramatic for passer. Intransitively (être) it means "to drop by, to pass through." Transitively (avoir) it covers "to spend (time)," "to pass (something to someone)," "to take (an exam: passer un examen)" — a wide range, all united by having a direct object.
retourner — to go back / to turn (something) over
Elle est retournée en France l'an dernier.
She went back to France last year. (intransitive — être)
Elle a retourné la crêpe à la perfection.
She flipped the crêpe perfectly. (transitive — avoir)
entrer / rentrer — to enter / to bring in
Les invités sont entrés dans le salon.
The guests came into the living room. (intransitive — être)
J'ai entré les données dans le système.
I entered the data into the system. (transitive — avoir)
The transitive use of entrer is almost limited to technical or administrative contexts (entering data, entering goods through customs). In ordinary speech, you'd use a different verb.
French/English transitivity mismatches
This is where transfer errors are most concentrated. The English-to-French mapping is not one-to-one, and several verbs that English speakers handle automatically have to be relearned.
English transitive, French intransitive (needs à)
| French | English equivalent |
|---|---|
| téléphoner à | to call (someone) |
| obéir à | to obey (someone) |
| répondre à | to answer (someone, a question) |
| plaire à | to please (someone) |
| ressembler à | to resemble (someone) |
| nuire à | to harm (something/someone) |
| convenir à | to suit (someone) |
| survivre à | to survive (something) |
Tu ressembles beaucoup à ta mère.
You really look like your mother.
Cette robe te plaît ?
Do you like this dress? (literally: does this dress please you?)
The structural consequence: when you replace the object with a pronoun, you use the indirect-object pronoun lui / leur, not the direct-object pronoun le / la / les: Je téléphone à Paul → Je lui téléphone (not je le téléphone).
English needs preposition, French is transitive (no preposition)
| French | English equivalent |
|---|---|
| écouter | to listen TO |
| regarder | to look AT |
| chercher | to look FOR |
| attendre | to wait FOR |
| demander | to ask FOR |
| payer | to pay FOR |
| habiter | to live IN (often) |
J'écoute la radio tous les matins.
I listen to the radio every morning.
Tu cherches tes clés ? Elles sont sur la table.
Are you looking for your keys? They're on the table.
Nous attendons le bus depuis vingt minutes.
We've been waiting for the bus for twenty minutes.
These verbs are flatly transitive in French. Adding a preposition is wrong: écouter à la radio and chercher pour les clés are not French. The structural consequence is the opposite of the previous group: replace with the direct-object pronoun le / la / les — je l'écoute, never je lui écoute.
Participle agreement consequences
Transitivity also drives the rules for past participle agreement, briefly:
- With être (intransitive verbs of motion + reflexives), the participle agrees with the subject: Marie est partie, les filles sont arrivées.
- With avoir (most transitive verbs), the participle does not agree with the subject — only with a preceding direct object, if there is one: les pommes que j'ai mangées (the apples I ate, agreement with les pommes placed before the verb).
Indirect objects (with à) never trigger participle agreement, no matter where they sit:
Les amis à qui j'ai téléphoné habitent à Lyon.
The friends I called live in Lyon.
The participle téléphoné stays invariable because à qui is an indirect object, not a direct one. This is why getting the transitivity of téléphoner right matters: it controls both the pronoun choice and the agreement.
Comparison with English
English does have transitive and intransitive verbs, but the distinction is much less consequential. English uses one auxiliary (have) for all compound tenses regardless of transitivity (I have gone, I have eaten, I have been), and there is no participle-agreement rule at all. The cost of getting transitivity wrong in English is mainly stylistic — saying "I listened the radio" sounds slightly off but is comprehensible.
In French, the same mistake cascades: you choose the wrong auxiliary, the wrong pronoun, and possibly miss agreement marks that are visible in writing. Three errors out of one misclassification. That is why French dictionaries and good French textbooks always note transitive (tr.) or intransitive (intr.) for each verb, and why memorizing the preposition that comes with a verb is part of memorizing the verb itself.
Common Mistakes
❌ J'ai allé au cinéma hier soir.
Incorrect — aller is intransitive and uses être, not avoir.
✅ Je suis allé au cinéma hier soir.
I went to the movies last night.
❌ J'écoute à la radio le matin.
Incorrect — écouter is directly transitive in French, no preposition.
✅ J'écoute la radio le matin.
I listen to the radio in the morning.
❌ Je téléphone mes parents le dimanche.
Incorrect — téléphoner needs à before the person.
✅ Je téléphone à mes parents le dimanche.
I call my parents on Sundays.
❌ Elle est sorti la poubelle.
Incorrect — sortir is transitive here (taking out the trash), takes avoir.
✅ Elle a sorti la poubelle.
She took the trash out.
❌ Nous sommes monté l'escalier en courant.
Incorrect — with a direct object (l'escalier), monter takes avoir.
✅ Nous avons monté l'escalier en courant.
We ran up the stairs.
❌ Tu attends pour le bus ?
Incorrect — attendre is directly transitive, no preposition.
✅ Tu attends le bus ?
Are you waiting for the bus?
Key takeaways
- A direct object completes the verb without a preposition; that's what makes a verb transitive.
- Most transitive verbs take avoir in compound tenses; a closed list of intransitive verbs of motion/change-of-state takes être.
- Monter, descendre, sortir, entrer, retourner, passer and rentrer switch auxiliary depending on whether you use them transitively or intransitively. Both auxiliaries and both meanings are correct — pick by structure.
- French and English don't draw the transitive line in the same place. Memorize the preposition (or its absence) as part of the verb.
- Indirect objects (with à) trigger different pronoun replacement (lui / leur) and never trigger participle agreement.
Now practice French
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Start learning French→Related Topics
- The Auxiliaries: avoir, être, and the periphrastic allerA2 — How French builds compound tenses with avoir or être, when each one is required, and how the choice affects past participle agreement.
- Passé composé: être + maison d'être verbsA1 — How to form the passé composé of verbs of motion and change of state with être, and why the past participle agrees with the subject like an adjective.
- 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.
- Les Pronoms Compléments d'Objet Direct (COD)A1 — Direct object pronouns — me, te, le, la, nous, vous, les — replace the noun the verb acts on. They sit in front of the verb, not after, and that single fact reshapes how French sentences are built.
- Les Pronoms Compléments d'Objet Indirect (COI)A1 — Indirect object pronouns — me, te, lui, nous, vous, leur — replace 'à + person'. They sit in front of the verb just like direct object pronouns, but the third-person forms (lui, leur) are completely distinct from le/la/les.