trouver

• treuver (obsolete)

Uncertain. Probably inherited from Old French trover, truver, from Vulgar Latin *tropāre (“to compose a poem”, > “to invent” > “to find”), from Latin tropus m (“figurative use of a word”); compare English trope.

Alternatively from Latin turbō (“to disturb, perturb”) via the sense “to churn up water to drive fish into the net”, a widely-practiced method of fishing, this sense being attested in Sardinian turbare, trubare. This etymology may have phonological difficulties (namely 1) the lowering of u near a labial consonant – though lowering of short [ʊ] to [o] is regular in Italo-Western Romance –, 2) the metathesis of r – though it is directly attested in Sardinian – , and 3) the analogical preservation of b – though it can be explained by the metathesis being late), but it has the advantage that, like the descendants of afflō and captō in other Romance languages, it derives from hunting terminology.

• IPA^(key): /tʁu.ve/

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• Rhymes: -e

trouver

1. (transitive) to find; to retrieve something lost, turn up something hidden, or encounter something previously unknown to one

   Quand est-ce qu'elle a trouvé les clés ?

   When did she find the keys?

2. (transitive) to find (something to be the case); to think or consider (something to be so)

   Je vous trouve si jolie. ― I find you so pretty.

3. (reflexive, se trouver) to find oneself (at a place or in a situation)
4. (reflexive, se trouver) to be found, to be situated, to be

   La boulangerie se trouve en face du cinéma. ― The bakery is [found] opposite the cinema.

5. (impersonal, reflexive, se trouver) to be the case, to turn out (that)

   Il se trouve que je passe près de chez vous.

   I happen to be heading past your place.

• trouveur

• “trouver”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

• rouvert

From Old French trover, truver, from Vulgar Latin *tropāre, from Latin tropus.

trouver

1. to find

• Middle French conjugation varies from one text to another. Hence, the following conjugation should be considered as typical, not as exhaustive.

• French: trouver

• trouvaïr (Guernsey)

From Old French trover, truver, from Vulgar Latin *tropāre, from Latin tropus.

• Audio (Jersey):

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trouver (gerund trouv'thie)

1. (Jersey) to find

• cachi (“to hide”)

From Old French trover, truver, from Vulgar Latin *tropāre, from Latin tropus.

trouver

1. to find