vouloir

Inherited from Old French voloir, voleir, from Vulgar Latin volēre, regularized from Latin velle.

• IPA^(key): /vu.lwaʁ/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -waʁ

vouloir

1. (transitive) to want, wish, desire

   Je veux voir le soleil. ― I want to see the sun.

   Hitler voulait la guerre, mais beaucoup n'en étaient pas conscients.

   Hitler wanted war, but many were not aware of it.

   • 1831, Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris [The Hunchback of Notre-Dame]:

     Quand je t'eus vue deux fois, je voulus te voir mille, je voulus te voir toujours.

     Having seen you twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see you always.

2. to expect; to think; forms rhetorical questions, perhaps better translated to English by rephrasing with would or should

   Qu'est-ce que vous voulez que j'en sache?

   How should I know?

   (literally, “What do you expect me to know about it?”)

   • 1943, Antoine Saint-Exupéry, chapter II, in Le petit prince [The Little Prince], New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, page 8:

     — Mais si tu ne l'attaches pas, il ira n'importe où, et il se perdra... […] / — Mais où veux-tu qu'il aille ! / — N'importe où. Droit devant lui... […] / — Ça ne fait rien, c’est tellement petit, chez moi !

     “But if you don't tie him,” I said, “he will wander off somewhere, and get lost.” […] / “But where do you think he would go?” / “Anywhere. Straight ahead of him.” […] / “That doesn't matter. Where I live, everything is so small!”

3. (reflexive) to see oneself as; to give the impression of, to seem

• vouloir que takes the subjunctive.
• The second-person singular and plural imperatives have alternative forms: veuille and veuillez, which have slight differences in usage. See individual articles for details.

• Saint Dominican Creole French: vlé
  • Haitian Creole: vle

vouloir m (plural vouloirs)

1. will

• bon vouloir

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