Irregular Past Participles: Complete Reference

French has roughly a hundred irregular verbs whose past participles you cannot derive from a regular rule. The bad news: you have to memorise them. The good news: they are not random. Almost every irregular past participle belongs to one of seven ending-families — -u, -i, -is, -it, -ert, -aint / -eint / -oint, and a small set of true outliers (été, eu, né, mort). Once you have learned the families, new verbs slot into them by analogy, and the work of memorisation drops dramatically.

This page is the comprehensive reference. Each family is presented as a table you can scan, with examples in context for the highest-frequency forms. The forms here cover essentially every irregular past participle you will meet at the B1–B2 level and beyond.

Family 1: -u endings

The largest of the irregular families. Many -oir verbs and -aître verbs land here, plus a scattering of -re and -ir verbs. The -u is pronounced /y/ — the rounded i sound — exactly like the -u of regular -re verbs.

Special spelling note: dû, mû, crû

Three masculine singular past participles take a circumflex accent specifically to disambiguate them from same-spelled words:

• dû (past participle of devoir) — circumflex distinguishes it from du (the partitive article).
• mû (past participle of mouvoir) — circumflex distinguishes it from mu (a Greek letter, also a French word for "moved" in technical contexts).
• crû (past participle of croître, "to grow") — circumflex distinguishes it from cru (the past participle of croire, "believed") and from cru (raw, uncooked).

The accent is used only on the masculine singular. Feminine and plural drop the accent because there is no ambiguity: due, dus, dues — mue, mus, mues — crue, crus, crues. This is one of the few cases where French agreement rules erase a diacritic.

The c-cedilla in -cevoir verbs

Verbs ending in -cevoir (recevoir, apercevoir, concevoir, décevoir, percevoir) take a cedilla under the c in the past participle and in any tense where the c is followed by u or o. This is purely orthographic — the cedilla preserves the soft s-sound of the c.

• recevoir → reçu (not recu — that would be pronounced /rə.ky/ with a hard k)
• apercevoir → aperçu
• décevoir → déçu

Family 2: -i endings (irregular)

A handful of Group 3 -ir verbs end in -i in the past participle, just like Group 2. The infinitive ending alone does not distinguish them from Group 2 verbs; the difference shows in the present tense (no -iss- infix) and in the auxiliary used (some take être, like partir, sortir).

A small spelling note: haï keeps the dieresis on the i in the past participle, just as in the infinitive haïr. The dieresis indicates that the a and i are pronounced separately (ha-i), not as a single syllable.

Family 3: -is endings

A small but high-frequency family. The two pillars are prendre (pris) and mettre (mis); each has a long list of compounds that all share the same pattern.

The final -s is silent in all of these forms; pris, mis, compris, promis end in /i/, not /is/. Pluralisation does not affect pronunciation: pris and prises both end in /i/ in masculine, /iz/ in feminine.

Family 4: -it endings

Like the -is family, organised around two pillars: dire (dit) and faire (fait), plus the cluster of -uire verbs that all share the -uit ending.

A note on a quiet trap inside this family: nuire (to harm) and luire (to shine) end in -uire but their past participles end in -i, not -it — nui, lui. They look like they should join cuire / cuit, fuir / fui tells the same story (no -it there either). The pattern is not perfectly regular even within -uire; nuire, luire, and fuir drop out.

Family 5: -ert endings

A small, tightly grouped family — five verbs that all derive from the same Latin pattern (aperire, cooperire, etc.). All form their past participle in -ert. The verbs in this family are also unusual in their present tense: they conjugate like -er verbs (j'ouvre, tu ouvres) despite being -ir verbs.

The final -t is silent: ouvert ends in /vɛʁ/, offert in /fɛʁ/. The feminine forms (ouverte, offerte) pronounce the -t: /vɛʁt/, /fɛʁt/.

Family 6: -aint, -eint, -oint endings

Verbs ending in -aindre, -eindre, and -oindre form their past participles in -aint, -eint, and -oint respectively. This family is morphologically clean: the -dre of the infinitive becomes -t, and the vowel pattern is preserved.

The final -t is silent in masculine forms (peint, éteint, joint) but pronounced in feminine forms (peinte, éteinte, jointe). This is a common pattern across French past participles ending in a consonant.

Family 7: special / unique forms

Four verbs have past participles that do not fit any family. They are among the highest-frequency verbs in French, so memorising them well is essential.

The form eu is one of the most commonly mispronounced past participles by learners. It is a single syllable, pronounced /y/ (the rounded i) — exactly like the letter u in du or the vowel of vu. The e and u together represent that single sound; it is not pronounced as two letters.

The form été is one of the few French words with two acute accents in a row. J'ai été is pronounced /e.te/ — clean and crisp. Despite being two syllables, it has just one consonant.

The forms né / née / nés / nées and mort / morte / morts / mortes agree with the subject because they always conjugate with être in compound tenses. Elle est née (she was born); ils sont nés (they were born); elles sont nées (they-feminine were born). For someone who has died in the past: il est mort (he died); elle est morte (she died); ils sont morts (they died).

A practice strategy: drill by family

The single best way to use this reference is to study the families one at a time, not the verbs alphabetically. Each family shares an ending, a sound pattern, and often a meaning cluster. Once you have one verb in a family solid, the rest fall into place by analogy.

A suggested order of attack, by frequency:

1. Special / unique — été, eu, né, mort. Learn these first; they are everywhere.
2. -u family core — vu, lu, bu, su, voulu, pu, dû, reçu, venu, tenu, connu, vécu. The big workhorses of the family.
3. -is family core — pris and its compounds, mis and its compounds, assis. Highly frequent.
4. -it family core — dit, écrit, fait, conduit, cuit. Faire and dire are everywhere.
5. -ert family — ouvert, offert, couvert, souffert, découvert. Small, finite, common.
6. -aint / -eint / -oint — peint, éteint, atteint, joint, rejoint, plaint. Less frequent but distinctive.
7. -i family — parti, sorti, dormi, servi, suivi, ri, suffi. Easy because they look like Group 2.

Spending fifteen minutes a day for two weeks on these tables is enough to internalise the lot.

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Applying a regular pattern to an irregular verb.

Mistake 2: Forgetting the circumflex on dû.

Mistake 3: Confusing the past participles of croire (cru) and croître (crû).

(Note: crû in this sense is rare in modern French; speakers tend to use grandi or poussé instead.)

Mistake 4: Adding an unnecessary -i to -ert verbs.

Mistake 5: Treating compound verbs as if they conjugated independently.

(General rule: any compound of an irregular verb keeps the same irregularity. Comprendre → compris, promettre → promis, défaire → défait, contredire → contredit. Once you know the base verb, you know all its compounds.)

Key takeaways

• French has roughly a hundred irregular past participles; they group into seven endings plus four true outliers.
• The seven families: -u (the largest, with voir, boire, recevoir, venir, connaître etc.), -i (with partir, sortir, suivre), -is (pris, mis, assis), -it (dit, écrit, fait, conduit), -ert (ouvert, offert, couvert), -aint / -eint / -oint (craint, peint, joint).
• Special forms: été (être), eu (avoir), né (naître), mort (mourir).
• A few participles take a circumflex on the masculine singular only: dû, mû, crû — to disambiguate from same-spelled words.
• Verbs in -cevoir take a cedilla in the past participle (reçu, aperçu, déçu) to preserve the soft c sound.
• Compounds inherit the irregularity of the base verb: comprendre → compris (like prendre), promettre → promis (like mettre), décrire → décrit (like écrire).
• The most efficient learning strategy is to study the families together, not alphabetically — analogies within a family dramatically accelerate memorisation.
• Many silent final consonants (-s, -t) are only pronounced in the feminine and plural agreement forms (pris /pri/ but prise /priz/; peint /pɛ̃/ but peinte /pɛ̃t/).