How to use bilingual dictionaries

Dictionaries try to save space whenever possible, and one of the most important ways they do this is by not duplicating information. Many words have more than one form: nouns can be singular or plural (and sometimes masculine or feminine), adjectives can be comparative and superlative, verbs can be conjugated into different tenses, and so on. If dictionaries were to list every single version of every single word, they'd have to be about 10 times bigger. Instead, dictionaries list the uninflected word: the singular noun, the basic adjective (in French, this means the singular, masculine form, while in English it means the non-comparative, non-superlative form), and the infinitive of the verb.

For example, you may not find a dictionary entry for the word serveuse, so you need to replace the feminine ending -euse with the masculine -eur, and then when you look up serveur, you'll find it means "waiter," so serveuse obviously means "waitress."

The adjective verts is plural, so remove the -s and look up vert, to discover it means "green."

When you wonder what tu sonnes means, you have to consider that sonnes is a verb conjugation, so the infinitive is probably sonner, sonnir, or sonnre - look those up to learn that sonner means "to ring."

Likewise, reflexive verbs, such as s'asseoir and se souvenir, are listed under the verb, asseoir and souvenir, not the reflexive pronoun se - otherwise that entry would run to hundreds of pages!