léser
French
Etymology
From Middle French leser, ultimately derived from Latin laesus, past participle of laedo (“I hurt, offend”).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /le.ze/
Audio (file)
Verb
léser
- (transitive) to wrong; to do wrong by (someone); to harm, to hurt
- 1913, Marcel Proust, Brian Nelson, transl., Un amour de Swann [Swann in Love], page 122:
- Elle savait que son mensonge lésait d'ordinaire gravement l'homme à qui elle le faisait, et à la merci duquel elle allait peut-être tomber si elle mentait mal.
- She knew, moreover, that through her lie she was usually seriously hurting the man to whom she was telling it, and at whose mercy she would perhaps find herself if she lied badly.
- 2021 May 2, “La Corée du Nord rejette tout dialogue avec Washington [North Korea rejects all dialogue with Washington]”, in Le Monde:
- Nous avons suffisamment averti les Etats-Unis pour comprendre qu'ils seront lésés s'ils nous provoquent.
- We have sufficiently warned the United States for them to understand that they will be harmed if they provoke us.
-
- (transitive, medicine) to lesion (to produce a lesion in)
Conjugation
This verb is conjugated like céder. It is a regular -er verb, except that its last stem vowel alternates between /e/ (written 'é') and /ɛ/ (written 'è'), with the latter being used before mute 'e'.One special case is the future stem, used in the future and the conditional. Before 1990, the future stem of such verbs was written léser-, reflecting the historic pronunciation /e/. In 1990, the French Academy recommended that it be written lèser-, reflecting the now common pronunciation /ɛ/, thereby making this distinction consistent throughout the conjugation (and also matching in this regard the conjugations of verbs like lever and jeter). Both spellings are in use today, and both are therefore given here.
| infinitive | simple | léser | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| compound | avoir + past participle | ||||||
| present participle or gerund1 | simple | lésant /le.zɑ̃/ | |||||
| compound | ayant + past participle | ||||||
| past participle | lésé /le.ze/ | ||||||
| singular | plural | ||||||
| first | second | third | first | second | third | ||
| indicative | je (j’) | tu | il, elle, on | nous | vous | ils, elles | |
| (simple tenses) | present | lèse /lɛz/ | lèses /lɛz/ | lèse /lɛz/ | lésons /le.zɔ̃/ | lésez /le.ze/ | lèsent /lɛz/ |
| imperfect | lésais /le.zɛ/ | lésais /le.zɛ/ | lésait /le.zɛ/ | lésions /le.zjɔ̃/ | lésiez /le.zje/ | lésaient /le.zɛ/ | |
| past historic2 | lésai /le.ze/ | lésas /le.za/ | lésa /le.za/ | lésâmes /le.zam/ | lésâtes /le.zat/ | lésèrent /le.zɛʁ/ | |
| future | lèserai or léserai /lɛz.ʁe/ | lèseras or léseras /lɛz.ʁa/ | lèsera or lésera /lɛz.ʁa/ | lèserons or léserons /lɛz.ʁɔ̃/ | lèserez or léserez /lɛz.ʁe/ | lèseront or léseront /lɛz.ʁɔ̃/ | |
| conditional | lèserais or léserais /lɛz.ʁɛ/ | lèserais or léserais /lɛz.ʁɛ/ | lèserait or léserait /lɛz.ʁɛ/ | lèserions or léserions /lɛ.zə.ʁjɔ̃/ or /le.zə.ʁjɔ̃/ | lèseriez or léseriez /lɛ.zə.ʁje/ or /le.zə.ʁje/ | lèseraient or léseraient /lɛz.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 | lèse /lɛz/ | lèses /lɛz/ | lèse /lɛz/ | lésions /le.zjɔ̃/ | lésiez /le.zje/ | lèsent /lɛz/ |
| imperfect2 | lésasse /le.zas/ | lésasses /le.zas/ | lésât /le.za/ | lésassions /le.za.sjɔ̃/ | lésassiez /le.za.sje/ | lésassent /le.zas/ | |
| (compound tenses) | past | present subjunctive of avoir + past participle | |||||
| pluperfect2 | imperfect subjunctive of avoir + past participle | ||||||
| imperative | – | – | – | ||||
| simple | — | lèse /lɛz/ | — | lésons /le.zɔ̃/ | lésez /le.ze/ | — | |
| 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:
(Christopher Kendris [1995], Master the Basics: French, pp. 77, 78, 79, 81). | |||||||
Further reading
- “léser”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.