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Les pompiers ont dégagé l'entrée.

Les pompiers ont dégagé l'entrée.
The firefighters cleared the entrance.
From Lesson 284:Informal French·French

Questions & Answers about Les pompiers ont dégagé l'entrée.

Why use dégagé for cleared instead of a verb like nettoyé?
The verb dégager specifically means to free something from obstructions or to clear a path. If you used nettoyer, which means to clean, it would imply the firefighters washed the entrance to remove dirt, rather than removing physical blockages like rubble or vehicles.
Where does the word pompiers come from?
It comes from the noun pompe, which means a pump. Because firefighters use water pumps to put out fires, a pompier is literally a pumper. This connection makes it a very easy vocabulary word to remember.
Since entrée is feminine, why doesn't the past participle dégagé have an extra e at the end?
When forming the passé composé with the helping verb avoir, the past participle only agrees with the direct object if that object comes before the verb. Because the direct object l'entrée comes directly after the verb here, dégagé stays in its default form.
Do you pronounce the s at the end of pompiers to connect it to ont?
In everyday spoken French, this liaison is usually skipped. You will just hear the é sound at the end of pompiers followed directly by the nasal sound of ont. Connecting them with a z sound is grammatically correct but belongs to formal speech.

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