savoir.
to know (something)
Meaning & usage
to know (something)
Savais-tu qu'il parle si bien l'anglais?
Comment savait-il que j'étais là?
to know how (to do something)
Savez-vous nager?
to be able to, to be apt to (especially in the negative or interrogative conditional; used in the positive in Belgium)
Il ne saurait tarder que...
«Il ne saurait être considéré comme un acte de résistance puisque le Hamas a cessé la résistance dans la bande de Gaza», a poursuivi M. Abbas.
to find out
Nous devons savoir pourquoi il a fait ça.
Where this word comes from
Inherited from Old French savoir/eir, from Vulgar Latin *sapēre, from Latin sapĕre. Comments The now-obsolete spelling sçavoir owes its ⟨ç⟩ to the Latin scīre (“to know”), which was long assumed to be the etymon of the French verb. The 1SG present indicative sais comes from Old French sai < Vulgar Latin */ˈsajo/ ≠ Classical Latin sapiō. The inflections with ⟨ch⟩ reflect regular palatalization of an original [pj], as in sache < Old French sacheṭ < */ˈsa(p)t͡ʃat/ < */ˈsapjat/ < Classical Latin sapiat (cf. French seiche < Latin sēpia). The past participle su comes from Old French seü < */saˈ(β)udo/ < Vulgar Latin */saˈputu/, most likely influenced by Latin perfect verb forms such as sapuī. Cognates See also Angevin sçavouèr, Aragonese saber, Asturian saber, Bourbonnais-Berrichon savoér, Bourguignon saivoi, Catalan saber, Champenois saouâr, Corsican sapè, Franc-Comtois saivoi, Friulian savê, Galician saber, Gallo savair, Italian sapere, Ligurian savei, Lombard saver, Lorrain sahoir, Neapolitan sapé, Norman savi, savaer, savei, Occitan saber, saupre, Picard savoèr, Piedmontese savèj, Poitevin-Saintongeais saver, Portuguese saber, Romansh savair, saveir, saver, Sicilian sapiri, Spanish saber, Venetan saver, Walloon saveur.
knowledge
Where this word comes from
Inherited from Old French savoir/eir, from Vulgar Latin *sapēre, from Latin sapĕre. Comments The now-obsolete spelling sçavoir owes its ⟨ç⟩ to the Latin scīre (“to know”), which was long assumed to be the etymon of the French verb. The 1SG present indicative sais comes from Old French sai < Vulgar Latin */ˈsajo/ ≠ Classical Latin sapiō. The inflections with ⟨ch⟩ reflect regular palatalization of an original [pj], as in sache < Old French sacheṭ < */ˈsa(p)t͡ʃat/ < */ˈsapjat/ < Classical Latin sapiat (cf. French seiche < Latin sēpia). The past participle su comes from Old French seü < */saˈ(β)udo/ < Vulgar Latin */saˈputu/, most likely influenced by Latin perfect verb forms such as sapuī. Cognates See also Angevin sçavouèr, Aragonese saber, Asturian saber, Bourbonnais-Berrichon savoér, Bourguignon saivoi, Catalan saber, Champenois saouâr, Corsican sapè, Franc-Comtois saivoi, Friulian savê, Galician saber, Gallo savair, Italian sapere, Ligurian savei, Lombard saver, Lorrain sahoir, Neapolitan sapé, Norman savi, savaer, savei, Occitan saber, saupre, Picard savoèr, Piedmontese savèj, Poitevin-Saintongeais saver, Portuguese saber, Romansh savair, saveir, saver, Sicilian sapiri, Spanish saber, Venetan saver, Walloon saveur.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.