Boire, meaning to drink in French, is one of the most useful verbs in the language. Whether we’re talking about drinking water or wine, or whether it’s a person or an animal who drinks, you’ll surely want to know your boire conjugation.
Boire is an irregular verb, so many of its tenses have conjugations that need to be learned outright. In today’s post we’ll go over every boire conjugation so you have an easy reference for all of this important verb’s tenses. We’ll break our post down by mood, first showing our boire conjugations in the simple tenses and then covering the compound tenses.
The French verb Boire: Introduction
Boire is a third-group verb, since many of its conjugations don’t follow the pattern of regular -er or -ir verbs. It’s also distinct from other common ‑oir verbs such as voir, savoir, devoir, or pouvoir. The conjugation of boire even has some differences from that of the other common ‑oire verb, croire.
There’s nonetheless one derivative of the French verb boire, which is reboire. As you might guess, reboire means to drink again, or perhaps simply to redrink. Every boire conjugation we see here can be applied exactly the same way to get the reboire conjugation.
Whether you’re heading to happy hour with friends, ordering drinks at a restaurant, or giving some water to your pets, knowing all the ways to conjugate the verb to drink in French will come in handy in so many situations!
We’ll keep our explanations of each tense to a minimum, simply providing links to our dedicated grammar posts where applicable. If you’re a total beginner, start with our in-depth lesson on French verb conjugation and verb tenses. Now let’s get started with our boire conjugation charts!
This article is brought to you by LingoCulture, Where you can get unlimited private French classes via Zoom with native teachers for a flat monthly rate. It’s the closest thing to immersion you can get without living in a French-speaking country. Click here to learn more.
Boire: Impersonal forms
Before we get into our conjugations, let’s cover the impersonal forms of boire. The base form, boire, is the infinitif, while the participe, bu, appears in all of the compound tenses later on. In the compound tenses, boire takes the auxiliary verb avoir, as does its derivative reboire.
| infinitif | boire |
| infinitif passé | avoir bu |
| participe | bu (e, s, es) |
| participe présent | buvant |
| participe passé | ayant bu |
Boire conjugation: Indicative mood
We’ll start with the four simple tenses in l’indicatif: le présent, l’imparfait, le passé simple, and le futur simple. Then we’ll see the four compound tenses: le passé composé, le plus-que-parfait, le passé antérieur, and le futur antérieur.
Boire conjugation: présent de l’indicatif
Note the irregular stem buv‑ in the first‑ and second-person plural forms of our boire present tense conjugations.
| Subject | boire: présent |
| je | bois |
| tu | bois |
| il, elle, on | boit |
| nous | buvons |
| vous | buvez |
| ils, elles | boient |
Boire conjugation: imparfait
Note that we use the stem buv‑ in all of our boire imparfait conjugations.
| Subject | boire: imparfait |
| je | buvais |
| tu | buvais |
| il, elle, on | buvait |
| nous | buvions |
| vous | buviez |
| ils, elles | buvaient |
Boire conjugation: passé simple
| Subject | boire: passé simple |
| je | bus |
| tu | bus |
| il, elle, on | but |
| nous | bûmes |
| vous | bûtes |
| ils, elles | burent |
Boire conjugation: futur simple
Note that the je conjugation is different from the tu form when we conjugate boire in the futur simple, unlike the other simple indicative tenses of boire.
The stem also differs from the other simple tenses in that it remains boir‑ rather than buv‑, so our boire futur simple conjugations actually follow the regular pattern.
| Subject | boire: futur simple |
| je | boirai |
| tu | boiras |
| il, elle, on | boira |
| nous | boirons |
| vous | boirez |
| ils, elles | boiront |
Boire conjugation: passé composé
| Subject | boire: passé composé |
| j’ | ai bu |
| tu | as bu |
| il, elle, on | a bu |
| nous | avons bu |
| vous | avez bu |
| ils, elles | ont bu |
Boire conjugation: plus-que-parfait
| Subject | boire: plus-que-parfait |
| j’ | avais bu |
| tu | avais bu |
| il, elle, on | avait bu |
| nous | avoins bu |
| vous | aviez bu |
| ils, elles | avaient bu |
Boire conjugation: passé antérieur
| Subject | boire: passé antérieur |
| j’ | eus bu |
| tu | eus bu |
| il, elle, on | eut bu |
| nous | eûmes bu |
| vous | eûtes bu |
| ils, elles | eurent bu |
Boire conjugation: futur antérieur
| Subject | boire: futur antérieur |
| j’ | aurai bu |
| tu | auras bu |
| il, elle, on | aura bu |
| nous | aurons bu |
| vous | aurez bu |
| ils, elles | auront bu |
Boire conjugation: Conditional mood
Now let’s take a look at the boire conjugation charts for le conditionnel. The boire conditionnel conjugations follow the regular patterns in both the simple and compound tenses.
The conditionnel présent endings are the same as the imparfait endings we saw above. We can easily differentiate these two tenses of boire since the imparfait takes the irregular stem buv‑ while the conditionnel takes the regular stem boir‑.
Give your pronunciation some practice with the distinctive ‑i‑ sound in the nous and vous forms of boire conditionnel présent: boirions and boiriez!
Boire conjugation: conditionnel présent
| Subject | boire: conditionnel présent |
| je | boirais |
| tu | boirais |
| il, elle, on | boirait |
| nous | boirions |
| vous | boiriez |
| ils, elles | boiraient |
Boire conjugation: conditionnel passé
| Subject | boire: conditionnel passé |
| j’ | aurais bu |
| tu | aurais bu |
| il, elle, on | aurait bu |
| nous | aurions bu |
| vous | auriez bu |
| ils, elles | auraient bu |
Boire conjugation: Subjunctive mood
Now we’re ready to cover the boire subjonctif conjugations. We’ll start with the two subjunctive tenses that are actually used, le subjonctif présent and le subjonctif passé. Then we’ll cover the two archaic subjunctive tenses, l’imparfait du subjonctif and le plus-que-parfait du subjonctif.
Boire conjugation: subjonctif présent
The irregular subjunctive stem of boire is boiv‑ for most of the grammatical persons, while it has the same stem for nous and vous that we saw in the présent and imparfait of the indicative: buv‑.
Note that the spelling here is identical between the first‑ and third-person singular conjugations, in contrast to the indicative tenses where the spelling was the same between the je and tu conjugations.
| Subject | boire: subjonctif présent |
| que je | boive |
| que tu | boives |
| qu’il, qu’elle, qu’on | boive |
| que nous | buvions |
| que vous | buviez |
| qu’ils, qu’elles | boivent |
Boire conjugation: subjonctif passé
| Subject | boire: subjonctif passé |
| que j’ | aie bu |
| que tu | aies bu |
| qu’il, qu’elle, qu’on | ait bu |
| que nous | ayons bu |
| que vous | ayez bu |
| qu’ils, qu’elles | aient bu |
Boire conjugation: subjonctif imparfait
| Subject | boire: subjonctif imparfait |
| que je | busse |
| que tu | buses |
| qu’il, qu’elle, qu’on | bût |
| que nous | bussions |
| que vous | bussiez |
| qu’ils, qu’elles | bussent |
Boire conjugation: subjonctif plus-que-parfait
| Subject | boire: subjonctif plus-que-parfait |
| que j’ | eusse bu |
| que tu | eusses bu |
| qu’il, qu’elle, qu’on | eût bu |
| que nous | eussions bu |
| que vous | eussiez bu |
| qu’ils, qu’elles | eussent bu |
Boire conjugation: Imperative mood
We’re nearly done with all of our boire conjugations, with just the command form remaining in case you need to tell someone to drink in French. With boire imperatif, we use the exact same conjugations as boire présent de l’indicatif.
We present both impératif tenses in the same boire conjugation chart here.
| Subject | boire: impératif présent | boire: impératif passé |
| [tu] | bois | aie bu |
| [nous] | buvons | ayons bu |
| [vous] | buvez | ayez bu |
Conclusion: Boire conjugation in French
We’ve just seen the full conjugation charts for the French verb boire, in every mood and tense. As an irregular verbe du troisième groupe, many of the verb forms need to be learned outright.
We saw how many of the tenses demonstrate fairly regular boire conjugations, whereas several are indeed built on different irregular stems. In addition to the regular stem of boir‑, we also saw buv‑ across several tenses grammatical persons, while the boire subjunctive conjugation was built around boive for several grammatical persons.
This concludes our post on French boire conjugation, so now you have a full reference on all the forms of to drink in French!