How to Master French Reflexive Verbs

French reflexive verbs are verbs refer to the fact that that the subject of the sentence is doing something to oneself. In other words, the verb is “reflecting” back on the subject of the sentence.

With reflexive verbs in French, certain pronouns must always be included when you’re constructing a sentence with a reflexive verb, even if the same sentence in English when you would not normally include “myself”, “yourself,” etc.

List of Reflexive Pronouns

To form French reflexive verbs, you’ll first need to understand reflexive pronouns.

Reflexive Pronouns in English

You might have never thought of these pronouns consciously, but take a moment to so you can better understand how you translate these pronouns into French. They are: “myself”, “yourself”, “himself”, “herself”, “oneself”, “ourselves”, “yourselves”, and “themselves”.

Reflexive Pronouns in French

In English, you rarely place the reflexive pronoun right after the subject pronoun. For instance:

“She tied her shoes herself.”

However, in French, the reflexive pronoun often goes right after the subject pronoun. This means you’ll have two pronouns in a row in a French sentence.

French reflexive pronouns
je me	nous nous
tu te	vous vous
il/elle se	ils/elles se

Using reflexive pronouns in sentences to form French reflexive verbs

Present Tense

In the present tense, the reflexive pronouns go directly in front of the verb.

English: “I wake up” → French: “Je me réveille” (literally, “I myself wake up”, or “I wake myself up”)

In passé composé and plus-que parfait

One important part of understanding reflexive sentences is that in the passé composé and plus-que parfait verb tenses, all reflexive verbs are conjugated with être. So you’ll have verbs that use the normal avoir auxiliary verb when the object of the sentence is someone or something other than the subject of the sentence, but you’ll use the être auxiliary verb if the object is a reflexive pronoun.

And just like the other verbs that are always conjugated with être (the “Dr Mrs Vandertramp” verbs), the past participle also needs to agree with in gender and plurality of the subject of the sentence.

Below, the underlined words show the distinction between who or what the verb of the sentence is applying to. In English, the reflexive pronoun is sometimes implied rather than outright stated, but in French it must always be includd.

French Reflexive verbs in the passé composé

NOT REFLEXIVE: J’ai maquillé mon ami. (“I applied makeup to my friend”, conjugated with avoir, no feminine ending on the past participle maquillé)

REFLEXIVE: Je me suis maquillée. (“I applied makeup (to myself)”, conjugated with être, feminine ending on the past participle maquillé because the speaker is female)

French Reflexive verbs in the plus-que parfait

NOT REFLEXIVE: Elles avaient baigné les chiens (“They had bathed the dogs”, conjugated with avoir)

REFLEXIVE: Elles s’étaient baignées. (“They had bathed (themselves)”, conjugated with être, feminine and plural ending on the past participle baigné because the subject is feminine plural)

How to form ne…pas and other negations with French Reflexive Verbs

Understanding how to order negation words in sentences is an important part of being able to form more complex sentences with French reflexive verbs.

Negations in Single Verb Sentences

In single-verb constructions, the negation structure goes around the entire verb structure, including the reflexive pronoun. In other words, the order becomes: [negation part 1] + [reflexive pronoun] + [verb] + [negation part 2].

For example, in the present tense:

Elle ne se dépêche pas. (“She does not hurry”)

Vous ne vous habillez jamais rapidement (“You never get dressed quickly.”)

In the future tense:

Catherine ne se fatiguera pas. (“Catherine will not get tired.”)

In the conditional tense:

Elle ne se marierait jamais. (“She would never get married.”)

Negations in Two part verb structures

In compound (two-part) verb structures, the negation goes around the reflexive pronoun and first verb. In other words, the order becomes: [negation part 1] + [reflexive pronoun] + [conjugated verb] + [negation part 2] + [past participle]. And don’t forget the gender/number agreement!

For example, in the passé composé:

Marc ne s’est pas réveillé. (“Marc did not wake up.”)

In the plus-que parfait:

Vous ne vous étiez pas lavés. (“You had not washed (yourselves).”)

In the conditional past:

Je ne me serais pas noyé. (“I would not have drowned.”)

When Are Verbs Not French reflexive verbs?

Reflexive verbs only happen when the action is being performed by the subject of the sentence, on the subject of the sentence.

If a verb is being done to something or someone other than the subject of the sentence, it is not a reflexive verb (but if a pronoun is involved as a direct object, it might be a reciprocal or pronominal verb and use the same reflexive pronouns; see that section later on in this lesson).

To determine whether you have a reflexive verb, you must consider the context of the sentence, because many French reflexive verbs can also be non-reflexive, as well. Below, the first sentence in each example is reflexive, and the second sentence is not reflexive:

Tu te laves (“You wash yourself”), but tu laves le chien (“You wash the dog”).

Ils se sont rasés avant le dîner (“They shaved before dinner”), but ils ont rasé leur caniche (“They shaved their poodle.”)

List of French reflexive verbs

Most reflexive verbs fall into one of these two categories: 1) hygiene or personal tasks that refer to a person’s upkeep, or 2) verbs of a person’s emotions or actions to himself/herself.

Verbs of hygiene/personal tasks
se laver	to wash oneself
se réveiller	to wake up
se lever	to get up
se rêver	to dream
se brosser	to brush
se maquiller	to apply makeup
se baigner	to bathe
se coiffer	to fix one’s hair
se coucher	to go to bed
s’habiller/se déshabiller	to get dressed/undressed
se moucher	to blow one’s nose
se peigner	to comb
se raser	to shave
se reposer	to rest

Verbs of one’s emotions/actions
se taire	to be quiet
s’énerver	to be annoyed
se dépêcher	to hurry
se couper	to cut oneself
s’habituer a	to get used to
se fier/se méfier	to trust/to distrust
se fâcher	to get angry
se fatiguer	to tire
s’imaginer	to imagine
s’intéresser à	to be interested in
se marier	to get married
se moquer	to make fun of
se noyer	to drown
se promener	to take a walk
se soûler	to get drunk
se souvenir de	to remember
s’enrhumer	to get a cold

The other Verbs conjugated with French Reflexive Pronouns

Finally, there are also two other types of verbs that are conjugated with the reflexive pronouns: reciprocal verbs and idiomatic pronominal verbs.

1) French reciprocal verbs

Reciprocal verbs are simply verbs that can have a pronoun as a direct object (with the same position rules applying as the other reflexive verbs, above). Basically, reciprocal verbs mean that two different subjects are acting on each other, and the direct object of the sentence is a pronoun. For example:

“I see you.” → Je te vois.

Like the reflexive verbs above, these verbs can also be used without reflexive pronouns if the object of the sentence is not a pronoun, such as:

Je vois mon ami” (“I see my friend”)

Here are some of the most commonly used French reciprocal verbs to know:

Reciprocal Verbs
s’adorer	to adore something
s’aimer	to love something
s’apercevoir	to see something
se parler	to talk with someone
se voir	to see each other
se comprendre	to understand someone
se dire	to speak to each other
se connaître	to know each other
s’écrire	to write to someone
se disputer	to argue with someone
se détester	to hate someone
se promettre	to promise someone
s’embrasser	to kiss someone
se quitter	to leave someone
se regarder	to look at something
se rencontre	to meet someone
se sourire	to smile at someone
se téléphoner	to call someone

2) French idiomatic pronominal verbs

Finally, there are also verbs that mean one thing when you do not use a reflexive pronoun, and something slightly different when you do use a reflexive pronoun. The definitions with the pronominal verb versions are listed below.

Idiomatic Pronominal Verbs
s’en aller	to go away
s’appeler	to be named
s’attendre à	to wait for
se demander	to wonder
se doubter	to suspect
s’eloigner	to move oneself away
s’endormir	to fall asleep
s’ennuyer	to be bored
s’eloigner	to move oneself away
se figurer	to imagine, picture
s’habituer à	to get used to
s’installer	to settle in
se mettre à	to begin to
se perdre	to get lost
se plaindre	to complain
se refuser de	to deny oneself
se rendre à	to go to
se rendre compte de	to realize
se servir	to make use of
se tromper	to be mistaken
se trouver	to be located

Next Steps

Alright, that was a lot of information, but you should feel pretty confident about what reflexive pronouns are and how different types of verbs that use reflexive pronouns work. You might want to brush up on your other pronouns (like subject pronouns, object pronouns, and y/en pronouns) next.