ses
/se/
Translation
his, her, its (plural)
Examples
collègues , ' .
He really likes his office colleagues, they get on well.
invité cousins week-end .
She invited her cousins to spend the weekend at her place.
remue queue ' jouets panier.
The dog wags its tail as soon as it sees its toys come out of the basket.
vendu vieilles dessinées Internet.
My brother sold all his old comic books on the Internet.
alphabétique l'étagère.
Marie arranges her books in alphabetical order on the shelf.
Ses is the plural third-person possessive adjective in French, covering "his", "her" and "its" before any plural noun, masculine or feminine: ses cousins (his/her cousins), ses idées (his/her ideas). Like every French possessive, it agrees with the thing possessed, not the owner; the gender of the person who owns the cousins is invisible in the form, and context has to do that work.
In the plural the masculine/feminine distinction collapses, so son and sa both become ses. The final s is silent on its own but links as a /z/ when the next word starts with a vowel: ses amis sounds like sez-amis. The parallel plural forms are mes (my) and tes (your, informal); the longer-distance set is nos, vos, leurs. See the French possessives guide for the full nine-form table.
Related words
Used in
Stories
- Le premier jour de Clara4 min read
- Un voyage difficile4 min read
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