How to Conjugate 'Prévoir' (to Foresee; to Plan)

The French verb prévoir has a few definitions, including "to foresee," "to provide" and "to plan." It is an irregular - ir verb, so you will need to memorize its atypical conjugation pattern in order to use it properly in conversation.

How to Conjugate the French Verb Prévoir

With regular -ir French verbs, you remove the infinitive ending to determine the stem, to which you'd add the ending associated with the subject pronoun and the tense you're using. However, that doesn't work with all verbs, hence the irregular verb. Pay close attention to the tables below, which show the simple conjugations for prévoir—the stem and endings can be quite different from those of regular -ir verbs. Other verbs that follow a similar conjugation pattern include entrevoir, revoir, and voir.

How to Form the Past Tense of Prévoir

The passé simple is almost exclusively used as a literary tense. Therefore, to render verbs in the past tense, you use the passé composé, a compound tense. Prévoir requires the auxiliary verb avoir and the past participle prévu.

For example:

Elle a prévu les jeux pour la fête.
She planned the games for the party.

Nous avons prévu le divorce de nos amis.
We foresaw our friends' divorce.