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verb

plaire

/plɛʁ/

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verb/plɛʁ/

to please, to appeal to (usually translated into English as like with exchange of subject and object); to enjoy (oneself)

Cet homme me plaitI like/fancy that man.

Inherited from Middle French plaire, from Old French plaire, from plaisir, from Latin placēre. The original infinitive has now became a noun, and the infinitive ending was changed to -aire by analogy with the future and conditional forms in plair-. The future stem came from Latin pluperfect stem placuer- (placueram, placuerās, ...); some other verbs also use the pluperfect stem for their future stems (but not in the case of pluperfect forms containing -s- or -x-), for example tenir, tiendrai (if