abattre

Inherited from Middle French abbatre, from Old French abatre, from Late Latin abbattere, from Latin battere.

Cognate with Catalan abatre, Corsican abbatta, abbatte, Galician abater, Italian abbattere, Occitan abatre, Portuguese abater, Romanian abate, Sardinian abbàttiri, Sicilian abbàttiri, Spanish abatir.

• IPA^(key): /a.batʁ/

• Audio:

  (file)

abattre

1. to butcher; to slaughter for meat
2. to shoot dead
3. to cut down (a tree)
4. to destroy or demolish (a wall)
5. (reflexive) to fall down, especially of tall things, such as trees
6. (pronominal) to descend upon with violence or furor
   • 2021 December 16, Cécile Ducourtieux, “Au Royaume-Uni, la progression d’Omicron est « stupéfiante, jamais observée jusqu’à présent »”, in Le Monde‎^[1]:

     « Fulgurante », « phénoménale » ou « stupéfiante » : les conseillers scientifiques du gouvernement britannique n’ont pas de mots assez forts pour qualifier la vague Omicron qui s’abat sur le Royaume-Uni.

     "Striking", "phenomenal", or "stupefying": the scientific advisers to the British government do not have words strong enough to describe the Omicron wave which descending upon the United Kingdom.

7. (pronominal, of lightning) to strike

This verb is conjugated like battre. That means it is conjugated like vendre, perdre, etc. (sometimes called the regular -re verbs), except that instead of *abatt and *abatts, it has the forms abat and abats. This is strictly a spelling change; pronunciation-wise, the verb is conjugated exactly like vendre.

• battre

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

• baratte, ébattra, rabatte

• abat

From Old French abatre, from Late Latin abbattere, from Latin battere.

• IPA^(key): /a.batr/

abattre

1. (Jersey) to knock down

• Spence, N.C.W. (1960). Glossary of Jersey-French. Oxford: Blackwell. p. 39.