/se/
Translation
his, her, its (plural)
Word origin
Plural possessive adjective, from Latin suos and suas, the plural forms of suus ('his, her, its own').
- Origin
- Latin
- Root
- suus
Examples
collègues , ' .
He really likes his office colleagues, they get on well.
invité week-end .
She invited her cousins to spend the weekend at her place.
remue ' jouets panier.
The dog wags its tail as soon as it sees its toys come out of the basket.
vendu vieilles dessinées .
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.
Used in
Stories
(3)Grammar articles
(5)The French Present Participle and Gerund (le participe présent et le gérondif)
French Possessive Pronouns: le mien, le tien, le sien, le nôtre, le vôtre, le leur
French Possessives: mon, ma, mes and the mon-Before-Vowel Trap
The French Subjunctive After Doubt, Emotion and Opinion
The French Passive Voice (la voix passive)
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