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À cette époque, c'était une mode ridicule.

À cette époque, c'était une mode ridicule.
At that time, it was a ridiculous fashion.
From Lesson 131:The imperfect tense of être (j'étais, tu étais)·French

Questions & Answers about À cette époque, c'était une mode ridicule.

How do we form était if être is an irregular verb?
The verb être (to be) is the only verb with an irregular stem in the imparfait. While other verbs use their nous present-tense form to get the stem, être just uses ét-. Here, we add the standard third-person singular ending -ait to match c' (it), giving us c'était.
Why do we use the imparfait (c'était) instead of the passé composé (ça a été) here?
The phrase À cette époque (At that time) is a big clue! The imparfait is used to describe how things used to be or to set the scene in the past. We are describing a general ongoing state or trend during that era, rather than a single, completed event.
Is mode related to the English word mode?
They are related, but the gender changes the meaning! Une mode (feminine, used here) means a fashion or a trend. If you use the masculine un mode, it means a method or a mode (like un mode de vie for a way of life).
Why doesn't the adjective ridicule change to match the feminine noun une mode?
Because ridicule already ends in an -e in its default masculine form. In French, if the base dictionary form of an adjective ends in an unaccented -e, it stays exactly the same for feminine nouns.

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