saisir

French

Etymology

Inherited from Middle French saisir, from Old French saisir, seisir (whence English seize), from Early Medieval Latin sacīre (“lay claim to, take seisin”), from Frankish *sakjan (“to sue, litigate; accuse”).^[1]^[2] Compare Old English sacian (“to strive, brawl”), Faroese saka (“to hurt; accuse”), obsolete English sake (“strife”).

Alternatively Old French saisir, seisir may be borrowed from Old High German *sazjan^[3] and thus cognate to German setzen (“to set”) and Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐍄𐌾𐌰𐌽 (satjan).

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /sɛ.ziʁ/ ~ /se.ziʁ/
Audio: (file)
Audio (France (Vosges)): (file)
Audio (France (Lyon)): (file)
Audio (France (Somain)): (file)

Verb

saisir

to take hold of; to grab
to seize, to take (an illegal product), to capture
to grasp mentally; understand
(computing) to capture (screen or data)
(computing) to type (something) into a computer; to input
(accounting) to record (something) in an account, ledger, etc.
(law) to vest a court with a case; to refer a matter to a court

Conjugation

This is a regular verb of the second conjugation, like finir, choisir, and most other verbs with infinitives ending in -ir. One salient feature of this conjugation is the repeated appearance of the infix -iss-.

Conjugation of saisir (see also Appendix:French verbs)

infinitive	compound	avoir + past participle
infinitive	simple	saisir
present participle or gerund¹	simple	saisissant /sɛ.zi.sɑ̃/ or /se.zi.sɑ̃/
present participle or gerund¹	compound	ayant + past participle
past participle		saisi /sɛ.zi/ or /se.zi/
		singular			plural
		first	second	third	first	second	third
indicative		je (j’)	tu	il, elle, on	nous	vous	ils, elles
(simple tenses)	present	saisis /sɛ.zi/ or /se.zi/	saisis /sɛ.zi/ or /se.zi/	saisit /sɛ.zi/ or /se.zi/	saisissons /sɛ.zi.sɔ̃/ or /se.zi.sɔ̃/	saisissez /sɛ.zi.se/ or /se.zi.se/	saisissent /sɛ.zis/ or /se.zis/
	imperfect	saisissais /sɛ.zi.sɛ/ or /se.zi.sɛ/	saisissais /sɛ.zi.sɛ/ or /se.zi.sɛ/	saisissait /sɛ.zi.sɛ/ or /se.zi.sɛ/	saisissions /sɛ.zi.sjɔ̃/ or /se.zi.sjɔ̃/	saisissiez /sɛ.zi.sje/ or /se.zi.sje/	saisissaient /sɛ.zi.sɛ/ or /se.zi.sɛ/
	past historic²	saisis /sɛ.zi/ or /se.zi/	saisis /sɛ.zi/ or /se.zi/	saisit /sɛ.zi/ or /se.zi/	saisîmes /sɛ.zim/ or /se.zim/	saisîtes /sɛ.zit/ or /se.zit/	saisirent /sɛ.ziʁ/ or /se.ziʁ/
	future	saisirai /sɛ.zi.ʁe/ or /se.zi.ʁe/	saisiras /sɛ.zi.ʁa/ or /se.zi.ʁa/	saisira /sɛ.zi.ʁa/ or /se.zi.ʁa/	saisirons /sɛ.zi.ʁɔ̃/ or /se.zi.ʁɔ̃/	saisirez /sɛ.zi.ʁe/ or /se.zi.ʁe/	saisiront /sɛ.zi.ʁɔ̃/ or /se.zi.ʁɔ̃/
	conditional	saisirais /sɛ.zi.ʁɛ/ or /se.zi.ʁɛ/	saisirais /sɛ.zi.ʁɛ/ or /se.zi.ʁɛ/	saisirait /sɛ.zi.ʁɛ/ or /se.zi.ʁɛ/	saisirions /sɛ.zi.ʁjɔ̃/ or /se.zi.ʁjɔ̃/	saisiriez /sɛ.zi.ʁje/ or /se.zi.ʁje/	saisiraient /sɛ.zi.ʁɛ/ or /se.zi.ʁɛ/
(compound tenses)	present perfect	present indicative of avoir + past participle
	pluperfect	imperfect indicative of avoir + past participle
	past anterior²	past historic of avoir + past participle
	future perfect	future of avoir + past participle
	conditional perfect	conditional of avoir + past participle
subjunctive		que je (j’)	que tu	qu’il, qu’elle	que nous	que vous	qu’ils, qu’elles
(simple tenses)	present	saisisse /sɛ.zis/ or /se.zis/	saisisses /sɛ.zis/ or /se.zis/	saisisse /sɛ.zis/ or /se.zis/	saisissions /sɛ.zi.sjɔ̃/ or /se.zi.sjɔ̃/	saisissiez /sɛ.zi.sje/ or /se.zi.sje/	saisissent /sɛ.zis/ or /se.zis/
(simple tenses)	imperfect²	saisisse /sɛ.zis/ or /se.zis/	saisisses /sɛ.zis/ or /se.zis/	saisît /sɛ.zi/ or /se.zi/	saisissions /sɛ.zi.sjɔ̃/ or /se.zi.sjɔ̃/	saisissiez /sɛ.zi.sje/ or /se.zi.sje/	saisissent /sɛ.zis/ or /se.zis/
(compound tenses)	past	present subjunctive of avoir + past participle
(compound tenses)	pluperfect²	imperfect subjunctive of avoir + past participle
imperative		–	tu	–	~~nous~~	~~vous~~	–
simple		—	saisis /sɛ.zi/ or /se.zi/	—	saisissons /sɛ.zi.sɔ̃/ or /se.zi.sɔ̃/	saisissez /sɛ.zi.se/ or /se.zi.se/	—
compound		—	simple imperative of avoir + past participle	—	simple imperative of avoir + past participle	simple imperative of avoir + past participle	—
¹ The French gerund is usable only with the preposition en.
² In less formal writing or speech, these tenses may be found to have been replaced in the following way: past historic → present perfect past anterior → pluperfect imperfect subjunctive → present subjunctive pluperfect subjunctive → past subjunctive (Christopher Kendris [1995], Master the Basics: French, pp. 77, 78, 79, 81).

Derived terms

References

^ Onions, C[harles] T., Friedrichsen, G. W. S., and Burchfield, R[obert] W., editors (1966), “seize”, in The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology‎^[1], Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 807; reprinted 1994.
^ Barnhart, Robert and Steinmetz, Sol, editors (1988), “seize”, in The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology‎^[2], Bronxville, N.Y.: The H. W. Wilson Co., →ISBN, →OCLC, page 980.
^ Etymology and history of “saisir”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.