Valoir — to be worth | French Verb Chart

🇬🇧 Valoir: worth, mostly in the third person

Valoir — to be worth — is conjugated almost exclusively by things rather than people, which makes its table mercifully third-person in practice: ça vaut (it’s worth), ils valent, imparfait ça valait, futur ça vaudra (the -audr- stem, cousin to falloir’s faudra), participle valu. The full paradigm exists (je vaux, tu vaux — poetic and rare), and the subjunctive vaille survives mostly in the fossil « vaille que vaille » (come what may). Its structural sibling falloir (il faut) is third-person ONLY — the pair patrol the same impersonal corner of French grammar.

Three constructions do all the work. Ça vaut combien ? — what’s it worth? — the market-stall companion to ça coûte combien. Ça vaut le coup — it’s worth it (literally worth the blow) — the phrase every recommendation hangs on: « le détour vaut le coup ». And il vaut mieux + infinitive — it’s better to — advice grammar one notch more elegant than c’est mieux: « il vaut mieux réserver » (better book ahead), past conditional « il aurait mieux valu » (it would have been better — regret, upgraded). Add the proverb « mieux vaut tard que jamais » (better late than never — valoir leading the sentence, as proverbs like) and this quiet verb prices, advises and philosophises across French daily life.