Simple French Conjugations for "Punir" (to Punish)

The word punir is French for "to punish." In order to use this verb to mean the past tense "punished" or the present tense "punishing," you'll need to know how to conjugate it. Luckily, punir is a relatively easy one because it's a regular verb. A quick lesson will introduce you to the essential forms of punir you'll need for French conversations.

The Basic Conjugations of Punir

French verb conjugations do require some work. You need to memorize it in the various tenses and there's a new form for every subject pronoun within each tense. That means you have a lot of words to study. However, because punir is a regular -ir verb, you can apply what you already know for similar verbs to this one.

The first step is to identify the verb stem, which is pun-. From there, you will add the ending that corresponds to the subject pronoun and either the present, future, or imperfect past tense. For instance, "I am punishing" is je punis and "we will punish" is nous punirons.

	Present	Future	Imperfect
je	punis	punirai	punissais
tu	punis	puniras	punissais
il	punit	punira	punissait
nous	punissons	punirons	punissions
vous	punissez	punirez	punissiez
ils	punissent	puniront	punissaient

The Present Participle of Punir

The present participle of punir is punissant. This is a verb, though there may be some instances where you'll also find it helpful as an adjective or noun.

Punir in the Compound Past Tense

The past tense can be expressed with the imperfect or the passé composé. This is a compound, so you that requires the past participle puni.

To begin, conjugate the auxiliary verb avoir into the appropriate present tense for the subject. This results in phrases such as j'ai puni for "I punished" and nous avons puni for "we punished."

More Simple Conjugations of Punir

At times, you may need a few more conjugations for punir.  The subjunctive, for instance, questions whether the punishment will happen. In a similar fashion, the conditional implies that it's an "if...then" situation. The passé simple and imperfect subjunctive are typically reserved for written French, but they are good to know as well.

	Subjunctive	Conditional	Passé Simple	Imperfect Subjunctive
je	punisse	punirais	punis	punisse
tu	punisses	punirais	punis	punisses
il	punisse	punirait	punit	punît
nous	punissions	punirions	punîmes	punissions
vous	punissiez	puniriez	punîtes	punissiez
ils	punissent	puniraient	punirent	punissent

A useful verb mood for a word like punir, the French imperative is used when you want to be assertive and very direct. In this case, it's acceptable to skip the subject pronoun, so tu punis becomes punis.

	Imperative
(tu)	punis
(nous)	punissons
(vous)	punissez