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📚 This is the overview. « mourir » is taught level by level — pick your CEFR level below for a full lesson (explanation, pronunciation, exercises & games).
Five phrases with « mourir » — guess before the reveal. Practise with the free games → Open this short as a page — transcript included →
Mourir — to die — earns its irregularities: present je meurs, tu meurs, il meurt, nous mourons, vous mourez, ils meurent (the eu/ou vowel swap of the stressed stem), futur with the double r — je mourrai (vs imparfait je mourais: one letter between dying tomorrow and dying back then, the same rr club as courir and voir). The past takes être with agreement, and French prefers the participle as a state: « il est mort en 1980 » (he died in 1980 — literally “is dead”, doing both jobs), « elle est morte », « ils sont morts ». Subjonctif que je meure — as heard in every opera.
But the verb’s real workload is hyperbole, alive and well: mourir de faim (starving), mourir de rire (dying of laughter — the mdr of our texting lesson, fully conjugated), mourir de peur, d’ennui (bored to death), de froid — French dies of everything, daily, enthusiastically: « je meurs de faim ! » is lunchtime, not tragedy. The adjective mort spreads the drama — mort de fatigue (dead tired) — and place names keep the noun (la mer Morte). Even the imperative exists mostly in the theatrical « plutôt mourir ! » (I’d rather die!). A verb to conjugate precisely BECAUSE its daily use is exaggeration — nobody minds a grammar slip in real grief, but « je meurs de faim » with a perfect eu-stem earns a native smile.
Être, always, with agreement: il est mort, elle est morte, ils sont morts. « Il est mort » covers both “he died” and “he is dead” — context reads the tense.
Stem contraction: mourir → mourr-. Je mourrai (will die) vs je mourais (was dying) — the double r carries the future, as in courir and voir.
“I’m starving” — literally dying of hunger, figuratively lunchtime. The mourir de family (rire, peur, froid, ennui) is French hyperbole’s engine room.
I’m starving = je meurs ___ faim (idiom)
de
future (double r): je ___ (mou+rr)
mourrai
passé composé (f.): elle est ___ (être + agreement)
morte
je ___ (Mourir — present)
meurs
tu ___ (Mourir — passé composé)
es mort(e)
il ___ (Mourir — imperfect)
mourait
nous ___ (Mourir — future)
mourrons
vous ___ (Mourir — conditional)
mourriez
Go further: The past tenses — passé composé & imparfait explained.
je meurs, tu meurs, il / elle meurt, nous mourons, vous mourez, ils / elles meurent. Full charts for every tense are above, each form with audio.
mort(e) — the passé composé is « je suis mort(e) ». Mourir uses être as its auxiliary verb. Because it takes être, the past participle agrees: elle est morte, ils sont mort(e)s.
« je mourrai » — the future stem never changes across persons, only the endings do.
to die. It is one of the essential French verbs — drill the present first, then the passé composé; those two tenses carry most conversations.
Games built from this exact page — turn what you just read into play:
« mourir » at every CEFR level — the tense, its forms and the mechanic that makes it stick. Practise it with the free games →