Word
L'épicerie du village vend de tout.
Meaning
The village grocery sells everything.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of L'épicerie du village vend de tout.
le village
the village
vendre
to sell
tout
all, everything
l'épicerie
the grocery shop (f)
Questions & Answers about L'épicerie du village vend de tout.
Why does the sentence use de tout instead of just tout?
If the sentence said vend tout, it would mean the store is selling absolutely everything it owns, like in a closing-down sale! The phrase vend de tout means it sells a bit of everything, or a wide variety of goods. The de acts a bit like the word 'some' here.
Why do we say du village instead of de village?
The word village is a masculine noun, so it uses the definite article le. In French, whenever de (of) and le (the) meet, they must combine into the mandatory contraction du. So, du village translates to 'of the village'.
How is the verb vend conjugated here?
It comes from the infinitive vendre (to sell), which is a regular '-re' verb. Because the subject l'épicerie is third-person singular (acting like elle), you just drop the '-re' ending from the infinitive. That leaves you with the stem vend, and no extra letters are added for this subject.
Can I use de tout in other sentences?
Yes, it is a very common phrase for expressing 'a bit of everything' or 'all sorts of things'. For example, you can say je mange de tout to mean 'I eat a bit of everything' (if you aren't a picky eater), or il y a de tout to say 'there is a little bit of everything'.