y.
a letter in the French alphabet, after x and before z
Meaning & usage
a letter in the French alphabet, after x and before z
Where this word comes from
From i grec (“Greek i”), referring to the letter upsilon (Υ), originally borrowed from the Greek alphabet, as opposed to "Latin i" (I).
there (at a place)
Il est dans la maison. Il y est.
there, thither (to there)
Nous allons au Mexique. Nous y allons.
Used as a pronoun to replace an adverbial phrase starting with à.
Je pense à mon pays. J'y pense.
Used as a pronoun to replace an adverbial phrase starting with à. With verbs: see Appendix:French verbs followed by à for verbs which use this structure.
Used as a pronoun to replace an adverbial phrase starting with à. With adjectives. Only used with a handful of adjectives (the most common combination being y compris, which is a special case), mainly in legal terminology.
personnes y nommées
procédures y afférentes
Where this word comes from
10th century; from Old French i, from Latin hīc (“here”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰi-ḱe (“this, here”)), with meaning influenced by Old French iv (“there, thither”), itself from Latin ibī. Derivation from the latter poses difficulty from a phonetic standpoint. Compare Catalan hi.
alternative form of il; he
alternative form of ils; they (male)
alternative form of elles; they (female)
Where this word comes from
Eye dialect spelling or contraction of il and ils. The elles sense is from informal Québécois French ils, which means the same.
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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.