French Adverbs

An adverb is, like in english, a word that precise another word. It’s optional and depends of other words. For example:

A verb : Il court vite (He runs fast).
An adjective : Elle est très intelligente (She is very smart).
A sentence : Lentement, il descendit les escaliers (Slowly, he came down the stairs).
Another adverb : Elle mange très goulument (She eats very gluttonously.

The main rule when using adverbs is that they are invariant. To the opposite of the adjectives, the adverbs do not agree with any words they relate to. EXCEPT, the adverb « tout » (all), in the following cases:

Tout is used with a feminine noun starting by a consonant : Elle a mangé toute timidement (She ate very shyly).
Tout is used with a feminine noun starting by a « H » not pronunced : Elle était toute heureuse. (She was all happy).
Tout is invariant with a feminine noun starting by a vowel : Elle a mangé la tarte tout entière. (She ate the whole pie).

Notes

Here, Tout means « all », « the whole », « very ». So even if some sentences seem to have many meaning, you can figure the appropriate meaning by paying attention to the agreement.

For example : Ces filles sont toutes heureuses. What would be the meaning here ? All the girls are happy, or these girls are very happy ? Just read again the rules above if you don’t figure it out.

How to build adverbs

Some are just the way they are, (they come from Latin or after that and you can see them listed below) :

bien, en, hier, là, loin, mal, mieux, où, plus, quand, tant, tard, tôt, très, mais / avant, derrière, jamais, assez, arrière, dans, demain, etc.

Others are build with -ment to the feminine form of an adjective : Example : (Lent) Lente > Lentement (Slow > Slowly)

There are exception to this rule. For example « Prudent » (cautious). The feminine is « Prudente », but the adverb is « Prudemment ».

Some adverbs are also built directly on nouns, for exemple : « Diable » (devil) > « diablement ».

The colors adjectives can’t build an adverb. (Except vert, but the meaning is not ‘greenly’, but roughly or energicly).

Notes

Some adjectives are used as adverbs. Therefore, they become invariant. For example : Elle crit fort (she screams loudly), or Il achète américain (he buys ‘usa made’).

Adverb locutions are made as follow : à, de, en + noun or adjective ; à l’inverse, à côté, à présent, de fait, en général, etc.

Use

The adverb is attached to another word which it completes :

A verb : Il joue bruyamment (He plays loudly).
An adjective : Il est très grand (He is very tall).
Another adverb : Il mange très vite (He eats very fast).
A noun : C’est un bon garçon (It’s a good lad).
A preposition : Il aime uniquement les gâteaux aux fruits (He only likes the fruits’ cakes.
The whole sentence : Demain, c’est le départ (Tomorow, it’s the departure).

You should pay attention to which word the adverd is attached to.

For example the two following sentences have very different meaning :

Elle marche étrangement (She walks strangely). The adverb is about « marche », in other words on what it says (the adverb completes what the sentence says).
Etrangement, elle marche. (Strangely, she walks). The adverb is about the whole sentence, (she walks), in other words, on what it is said (the adverb comments on what the sentence says).

To understand which one is which ; try to use the negative on the whole sentence.

Elle ne marche pas étrangement. (She doesn’t walk strangely)
Etrangement, elle ne marche pas. (Strangely, she doesn’t walk.) You can see here that the adverb is about the sentence, not the verb.

Some adverbs are used are logical or time links in a speech
- Logical link : ainsi, effectivement, etc : for example : Je vous avais dit que je vous présenterai les adverbes. Ainsi, il est temps de commencer. (I’ve said that I’ll introduce the adverbs to you. Therefore, here we go.)
- Time link : premièrement, deuxièmement, puis, ensuite, etc : for example : Je vous montrerai qu’ils sont simples à utiliser, ensuite nous ferons une série d’exercices. (I’ll show they are easy to use, then we’ll do some exercises).

There are also some adverbs for question or exclamation : combien, comme, comment, quand, où, pourquoi, etc. Examples : Que s’est-il passé ? Il est tombé, mais il n’a pas eu mal. Ah, comme je suis soulagé de l’apprendre. (What happened ? He felt, but he was not hurt. Ah, how relieved I am to ear that.)

To compare

The adverbs are also used to compare things :

Comparative : Il est moins / aussi / plus grand que moi. He is less / as / more tall (taller) than me.

Superlative : Il est le plus / le moins fort de l’équipe. He is the more / the less strong of the team.

Intensity : Il est très / extrêmement affamé. He is very / extremly hungry.

Il est assez / moyennement affamé. He is fairly / moderately hungry.

Il est peu aimable. He is not very friendly.

French Adverbs usually add (-ment) to their feminine adjective form, the equivalent of (-ly) in English, for example: the adjective slow in French is (lent for masculine, and lente for feminine) now we only need the feminine to form an adverb, we will add (-ment) to it, so (slowly) would be (lentement). Easy!

Well there are some exceptions though, like if an adjective ends in an (i), then (-ment) is added to the masculine singular form, instead of to the feminine singular form: poli becomes poliment (politely)

If the adjective ends in (-ant) or (-ent), then the adverb ends in (-amment) or (-emment) which will be added to the root, and not to the whole adjective:

récent becomes récemment (recently)

Some other adjectives make odd adverbs like: gentil becomes gentiment (nicely).

Just like in English, not all the time an adverb has (-ly) at the end. And so is the case in French, some adverbs take an irregular form like:

bon becomes bien (well), mauvais becomes mal (badly).

The position of an adverb is almost like the position of an adjective sometimes it comes before or after the element it modifies. An adverb that modifies an adjective or adverb comes before that adjective or adverb. J'ai été immédiatement convaincu … (I was immediately convinced…).

When the adverb is modifying a verb, it is placed after the verb: J’ai bien domi (I slept well).

The list below contains many irregular adverbs as well as regular ones, but note that the irregular adverbs are the most used, so they would come handy if you memorize them by heart:

List of French Adverbs
endlessly	à l'infini	in front	devant	quite a few	pas mal de
barely	à peine	down	en bas	little by little	petit à petit
currently	actuellement	up	en haut	may be	peut-être
elsewhere	ailleurs	on the way of doing sthg	en train de	worse	pire
thus	ainsi	again	encore	more	plus (de)
then	alors	at last	enfin	previously	précédemment
apparently	apparemment	enormously	énormément	precisely	précisément
after	après	next	ensuite	first	premièrement
today	aujourd'hui	on purpose	exprès	near	près
previously	auparavant	frankly	franchement	almost	presque
immediately	aussitôt	kindly	gentiment	profoundly	profondément
around	autour	yesterday	hier	then	puis
in the past	autrefois	here	ici	somewhere	quelque part
before	avant	immediately	immédiatement	sometimes	quelquefois
a lot (of)	beaucoup (de)	intensely	intensément	rapidly	rapidement
well	bien	never	jamais	rarely	rarement
soon	bientôt	there	là	recently	récemment
briefly	brièvement	the majority of	la majorité (de)	seriously	sérieusement
how many/ much	combien (de)	most	la plupart de	often	souvent
constantly	constamment	over there	là-bas	sufficiently	suffisamment
first	d'abord	slowly	lentement	especially	surtout
besides	d'ailleurs	far away	loin	late	tard
early	de bonne heure	for a long time	longtemps	early	tôt
standing up	debout	now	maintenant	always	toujours
inside	dedans	poorly, badly	mal	suddenly	tout à coup
outside	dehors	better	mieux	a little while ago	tout à l'heure
already	déjà	less (than)	moins (de)	immediately	tout de suite
tomorrow	demain	naturally	naturellement	very	très
since	depuis	anywhere	n'importe où	too much/ many	trop (de)
lately	dernièrement	anytime	n'importe quand	little of	un peu (de)
behind	derrière	nowhere	nulle part	quickly	vite
from now	désormais	sometimes	parfois	deeply	vivement
below	dessous	everywhere	partout	willingly	volontiers
above	dessus

I hope the content of this page was useful to you, and that you learned some French Adverbs. Try to memorize them to be able to use them in your daily conversation. Make sure to check our Learn French page, which contains several lessons that might help you in your learning process.