How to Conjugate "Agacer" (to Annoy)

When you want to say "to annoy" in French, you will use the verb agacer. You can also conjugate the verb to say "annoyed" or "annoying," though this is a tricky one to work with. No worries, this lesson will walk you through the many conjugations of agacer.

Conjugating the French Verb Agacer

In order to change agacer to take on the meaning of someone who "annoyed" or "is annoying," a verb conjugation is necessary. The French endings are more complex than the English -ed and -ing and agacer is a bit of a challenge.

Agacer is a spelling change verb, which is common with the ending -cer. You will notice that some of the conjugations use a 'c' while others use the cedilla 'ç.' This is done to ensure that the pronunciation of a soft 'C' is used as the vowel that follows it changes.

Using the chart, you can learn which form of agacer is required to match the subject pronoun and tense of your sentence. For example, "I annoy" is "j'agace" while "we will annoy" is "nous agacerons."

The Present Participle of Agacer

The present participle for agacer is agaçant. Notice again how the cedilla appeared before the 'A' to keep the 'C' soft. Agaçent can be used as a verb and it also works as an adjective, gerund, or noun if needed.

The Passé Composé and Past Participle

Rather than using the imperfect, you can express the past tense with passé composé. For this, you will need to conjugate the auxiliary verb avoir, but you can use a single past participle form of agacé for all subject pronouns.

For instance, to say "I annoyed," you can use "j'ai agacé." Likewise, "you have annoyed" is "tu as agace." The ai and as are conjugations of avoir.

More Agacer Conjugations

There are a few more conjugations of agacer that you might want to remember, though they're not as important. 

You will find the subjunctive useful when the action is subjective. The conditional is for those times when the annoyance may or may not happen. Unless you're doing any formal French writing, you may not use the passé simple or imperfect subjunctive.

There may also be times when you want to use the imperative. This is particularly true for agacer because it's a short, rather direct command or request. When using the imperative, you can forget about the subject pronoun and skip right to the verb. Rather than "tu agace," you can use "agace."