The Simple Conjugations of "Manquer" (to Miss)

When you want to say "missed" or "missing" in French, you'll use the verb manquer. However, to get that past or present tense, a conjugation is required and this lesson will show you how that's done.

The Basic Conjugations of Manquer

Manquer is a regular -er verb so it follows the conjugation pattern that most French verbs use. For instance, words like pratiquer (to practice) and rêver (to dream) use the same endings you'll use for manquer. Studying a few of these at the same time makes each a little easier to remember.

Once you know that the verb stem (or radical) for manquer is manqu-, you can add the appropriate endings. This first chart covers the indicative mood and the basic present, future, and imperfect past tenses. All you need to do is match the subject pronoun with the appropriate tense for your subject. This gives you results such as je manque for "I am missing" and nous manquions for "we missed."

	Present	Future	Imperfect
je	manque	manquerai	manquais
tu	manques	manqueras	manquais
il	manque	manquera	manquait
nous	manquons	manquerons	manquions
vous	manquez	manquerez	manquiez
ils	manquent	manqueront	manquaient

The Present Participle of Manquer

For regular -er verbs, the present participle is formed with an -ant ending. This gives you the word manquant.

Manquer in the Compound Past Tense

The past tense can be either the imperfect or the passé composé in French. For the latter, you'll need the past participle manqué and the present tense conjugate of the auxiliary verb avoir. 

Forming this compound is quite simple. For example, "I missed" is j'ai manqué and "we missed" is nous avons manqué.

More Simple Conjugations of Manquer

Among the other basic conjugations you may need for manquer are the subjunctive and the conditional. The former is useful when you don't know if the act of missing will happen or not. The latter is for those times when the act is dependent on certain conditions.

Though they're used less frequently, it is still good to know the passé simple and the imperfect subjunctive. These are literary tenses which you'll encounter most often in written French, especially formal literature.

	Subjunctive	Conditional	Passé Simple	Imperfect Subjunctive
je	manque	manquerais	manquai	manquasse
tu	manques	manquerais	manquas	manquasses
il	manque	manquerait	manqua	manquât
nous	manquions	manquerions	manquâmes	manquassions
vous	manquiez	manqueriez	manquâtes	manquassiez
ils	manquent	manqueraient	manquèrent	manquassent

The French imperative gets right to the point and these assertive statements do not require the subject pronoun. Instead of tu manque, you can simply say manque.

	Imperative
(tu)	manque
(nous)	manquons
(vous)	manquez