faire

"To do" or "to make," and one of the most-used verbs in French because it also covers weather (il fait beau), sports and hobbies (faire du sport), and a long list of idioms (faire attention, faire de son mieux) where English reaches for a completely different verb.

• Qu'est-ce que tu fais ? — What are you doing?
• Il fait froid aujourd'hui. — It's cold today.
• Elle fait du yoga tous les matins. — She does yoga every morning.

Learners try to translate weather expressions word for word ("it makes cold") instead of learning il fait + adjective as a fixed pattern — and similarly reach for jouer instead of faire for hobbies/sports that aren't games (faire du vélo, not jouer au vélo).

• expression Laissez-faire — "Let do" — the 18th-century French Physiocrats' term for minimal government interference in the economy, borrowed into English essentially unchanged.
• expression Fait accompli — Literally "accomplished fact" (past participle of faire) — an English loanword for a done deal too late to reverse, in English use since at least the 1840s.