Être ou Avoir: Décider l'Auxiliaire

Every French compound tense — passé composé, plus-que-parfait, futur antérieur, conditionnel passé, subjonctif passé, plus the literary passé antérieur and plus-que-parfait du subjonctif — is built from an auxiliary plus the past participle. The only choice you make at the auxiliary slot is between avoir and être. Get this right and your compound tenses sound native; get it wrong and even your strongest sentence falls apart at the seams.

This page gives you the decision tree. The good news: the rule is genuinely simple, with one closed list of exceptions and one productive exception (pronominal verbs). The harder news: there is one switching rule (the transitive switch) that English speakers consistently miss, because English never makes this distinction.

The decision tree

Ask three questions, in this order. The first one to give a definite answer is your auxiliary.

That's it. Three questions cover everything.

Avoir: the default for most verbs

About 80% of French verbs take avoir in compound tenses. This includes virtually all transitive verbs (verbs that take a direct object) and most intransitive verbs as well.

With avoir, the past participle does not agree with the subject. J'ai mangé is the same whether the speaker is male or female. The participle agrees only with a preceding direct object — a separate rule covered in participle agreement overview.

Être: the maison d'être (closed list of ~17 verbs)

A specific, closed list of verbs takes être as their auxiliary. The traditional name is the maison d'être ("the house of être") — a mnemonic device that imagines the verbs as activities in a house. The list is finite; learn it once and you have it.

Plus the rarer but important apparaître (to appear, sometimes avoir as well), décéder (to pass away — formal for mourir), parvenir (to reach), advenir (to occur), intervenir (to intervene). The full count varies by source; the core 17 above are universally accepted.

The unifying semantic thread is motion or state change — going somewhere, coming somewhere, changing condition (born, died, became). The verbs all describe transitions of the subject through space or time.

With être, the past participle agrees with the subject in gender and number:

• Il est parti (masculine singular)
• Elle est partie (feminine singular — add -e)
• Ils sont partis (masculine plural — add -s)
• Elles sont parties (feminine plural — add -es)

This agreement is mandatory and audible only sometimes (née sounds like né, but morte sounds different from mort). In writing, it is always required.

For a deeper account of the maison d'être with mnemonic, see maison d'être mnemonic.

Pronominal verbs: always être

Every verb used pronominally — that is, with a reflexive pronoun (me, te, se, nous, vous, se) — takes être in compound tenses. No exceptions. This rule is exceptionless and overrides everything else.

The participle agreement for pronominal verbs is governed by a more nuanced rule: the participle agrees with the preceding direct object, which is usually but not always the reflexive pronoun. Je me suis lavée (the me is the direct object → agreement), but je me suis lavé les mains (here les mains is the direct object, and it follows the verb — no agreement: lavé, not lavée). For full coverage, see participle agreement overview.

A common comparison: many of these verbs have non-pronominal cousins that take avoir:

The flip is mechanical: as soon as the action turns inward (the subject is also the direct object), the auxiliary becomes être; outwardly directed at someone else, it stays avoir.

Passive voice: être + past participle

The passive voice in French — the cake was eaten, the book was written — is built with être + past participle. Don't confuse this with the maison-d'être pattern; it's a separate construction.

In passive constructions, être is the auxiliary of the passive (carrying tense) and the past participle of the lexical verb agrees with the subject (construite, feminine singular, agrees with maison). Compound passive forms — a été construite (passé composé passive), avait été construite (plus-que-parfait passive), aura été construite (futur antérieur passive) — stack avoir + past participle of être + past participle of the lexical verb. The two auxiliaries together explain why passive sentences can look long.

For full coverage, see passive overview.

The transitive switch: when être verbs become avoir

This is the single rule that English speakers most consistently miss. Six maison-d'être verbs change auxiliary when used transitively — that is, when they take a direct object. The transitive use changes their meaning slightly, and the auxiliary follows.

The transitive switch tracks a deep distinction: when the verb describes the subject moving through space without affecting anything else, être fits (the subject is the participant in a state change). When the verb describes the subject acting upon something — moving an object, taking an exam, spending time — avoir fits (there is an object being affected).

For full coverage including the rarer transitive uses (j'ai descendu l'ennemi = I shot down the enemy, slang), see transitive switch.

Walking through some examples

Sentence 1: "I went to the bakery."

• Verb: aller — maison d'être
• Used intransitively (no direct object — à la boulangerie is a prepositional phrase, not a direct object)
• → ÊTRE
• Je suis allé(e) à la boulangerie.

Sentence 2: "She washed her hands."

• Verb: se laver les mains — pronominal
• → ÊTRE (pronominal beats everything)
• Elle s'est lavé les mains. (no participle agreement because the direct object les mains follows the verb)

Sentence 3: "We took the suitcases upstairs."

• Verb: monter — maison d'être, but used transitively (direct object: les valises)
• Transitive switch → AVOIR
• On a monté les valises.

Sentence 4: "The cake was eaten by the kids."

• Verb: passive construction (manger in the passive)
• Passive uses ÊTRE + past participle
• Le gâteau a été mangé par les enfants.

Sentence 5: "I spoke to your mother yesterday."

• Verb: parler — not pronominal, not maison d'être
• → AVOIR (default)
• J'ai parlé à ta mère hier.

Quick comparison with English

English uses have as the auxiliary for all verbs in compound tenses (I have spoken, I have arrived, I have died). The être/avoir distinction is purely a French (and Italian, Dutch, German) phenomenon. English speakers therefore have to actively learn the maison d'être and the pronominal-être rule — there is no instinct from English to lean on.

The closest English parallel is the (now archaic) construction I am come, he is gone, she is risen — once standard in older English, now preserved only in religious or literary register (Christ is risen, the time is come). French held onto this Germanic-influenced pattern for the maison d'être verbs while English replaced it with universal have.

The transitive switch in French (j'ai monté les valises) is structurally similar to the English contrast I went up the stairs (intransitive) vs I took the suitcases up (transitive — but English uses different verbs, not the same verb with different auxiliaries).

Compound tenses with être agreement

Auxiliary choice has consequences for participle agreement. Here is the full passé composé of an avoir verb (parler) and an être verb (partir), side by side:

Notice that the avoir column has only one form (parlé) for all six persons; the être column has four agreement variants (parti, partie, partis, parties). This is one of the deepest differences between the two auxiliaries.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• The default auxiliary in French compound tenses is avoir. About 80% of verbs take avoir.
• Être is required for: (1) all pronominal verbs (se laver, se lever, s'endormir), without exception; (2) the maison-d'être verbs (~17 verbs of motion and state change) when used intransitively; (3) all passive constructions.
• Six maison-d'être verbs (monter, descendre, sortir, rentrer, retourner, passer) switch to avoir when used transitively (with a direct object). This is the transitive switch — the rule English speakers most often miss.
• With avoir, the past participle does not agree with the subject. With être, the participle agrees with the subject (gender and number). With pronominal verbs, the participle agrees with the preceding direct object — usually but not always the reflexive pronoun.
• Decision tree: pronominal? → être. Maison-d'être used intransitively? → être. Maison-d'être used transitively? → avoir. Anything else? → avoir.