How to Conjugate "Confondre" (to Confuse) in French

Similar to the English word "confound," the French verb confondre means "to confuse." When you want to say "confused" or "confusing," the verb must be conjugated and this lesson will show you how to do that.

Conjugating the French Verb Confondre

Confondre is a regular -RE verb and it follows a particular pattern in the conjugations. This same pattern is found in similar verbs like pedre (to lose) and descendre (to descend). You can take what you learn in this lesson and apply the same infinitive endings to learn the other verbs.

The stem of confondre is confond-, so we simply need to attach the proper ending to make it conform to the past, present, or future tense. For instance, the subject pronoun je in the present tense adds an -s to form "je confonds," meaning "I confuse." Likewise, the nous future tense for -re verbs always adds -rons to the stem: "we will confuse" is "nous confondrons."

Subject Present Future Imperfect
je confonds confondrai confondais
tu confonds confondras confondais
il confond confondra confondait
nous confondons confondrons confondions
vous confondez confondrez confondiez
ils confondent confondront confondaient

The Present Participle of Confondre

Add -ant to the stem of confondre to form the present participle confondant. This is a verb, of course, and can be used as an adjective, gerund, or noun when necessary.

The Past Participle and Passé Composé

To form the common past tense of passé composé in French, we use confondre's past participle of confondu. We also need to conjugate the auxiliary verb avoir and use the subject pronoun. 

For example, "I confused" is "j'ai confondu" and "we confused" is "nous avons confondu."

More Simple Confondre Conjugations

In less frequent instances, you may need to use one of the following verb forms of confondre. The subjunctive and conditional are verb moods that are used when the action is questionable. The passé composé and imperfect subjunctive are primarily found in formal writing.

Subject Subjunctive Conditional Passé Simple Imperfect Subjunctive
je confonde confondrais confondis confondisse
tu confondes confondrais confondis confondisses
il confonde confondrait confondit confondît
nous confondions confondrions confondîmes confondissions
vous confondiez confondriez confondîtes confondissiez
ils confondent confondraient confondirent confondissent

For exclamations, use the imperative form of confondre. When doing so, you can skip the subject pronoun. Rather than "tu confonds," use "confonds" on its own.

Imperative
(tu) confonds
(nous) confondons
(vous) confondez
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Team, ThoughtCo. "How to Conjugate "Confondre" (to Confuse) in French." ThoughtCo, Dec. 6, 2021, thoughtco.com/confondre-to-confuse-1369989. Team, ThoughtCo. (2021, December 6). How to Conjugate "Confondre" (to Confuse) in French. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/confondre-to-confuse-1369989 Team, ThoughtCo. "How to Conjugate "Confondre" (to Confuse) in French." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/confondre-to-confuse-1369989 (accessed March 29, 2024).