craindre

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French

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Etymology

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Inherited from Middle French, from Old French criembre, criendre (later creindre), from Classical Latin tremere, from Proto-Indo-European *trem- (to tremble). Altered into a regional Gallo-Romance Vulgar Latin form *cremere, with the initial c- under the influence of the Celtic root *krit- (Breton kridien, Scottish Gaelic crith),[1] ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *krey-. Compare the similar Occitan crénher.

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /kʁɛ̃dʁ/
  • Audio:(file)

Verb

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craindre

  1. (transitive) to fear
  2. (intransitive, slang) to suck (to be unwanted or bad)
    J’ai perdu mon portefeuille. — Merde, ça craint.
    I've lost my wallet. — Shit, that sucks.

Usage notes

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  • craindre que is followed by a subjunctive, and in formal French additionally takes ne as a meaningless or "expletive" particle, e.g. in the following sentence:
    Je crains que le lac ne soit froid.I fear that the lake is cold.

Conjugation

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This verb is conjugated like peindre. It uses the same endings as rendre or vendre, but its -nd- becomes -gn- before a vowel, and its past participle ends in 't' instead of a vowel.

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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References

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  1. ^ Etymology and history of craindre”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Further reading

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