bâtir
French, verb/ba.tiʁ/
bâtir is spelled B-Â-T-I-R (5 letters) and appears 9.1 times per million words in written French, the 7,166th most frequent French word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Bâtir is a French verb meaning “to build; to construct” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) defines it as “Agencer, disposer les pièces d’un vêtement en les faufilant, en les assemblant avec de grands points…”.
What does bâtir mean in English?
verb
- 1
to build; to construct
- 2
to build up
Source: English Wiktionary, French section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How French dictionaries define it
verb: 1. Agencer, disposer les pièces d’un vêtement en les faufilant, en les assemblant avec de grands points d’aiguille avant de les coudre tout à fait. 2. Façonner (le feutre destiné à la confection des chapeaux).
verb: 1. Construire une maison, un édifice. 2. Établir. 3. Développer la corpulence, la morphologie de quelqu'un. 4. Forger le caractère de quelqu'un.
The definition in the French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), in French.
Source: French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.
Forms of bâtir
- avoir + past participle infinitive multiword-construction
- bâtissant gerund participle present
- ayant + past participle gerund multiword-construction participle
- bâti participle past
- bâtis first-person indicative present
- bâtit indicative present singular
- bâtissons first-person indicative plural
- bâtissez indicative plural present
- bâtissent indicative plural present
- bâtissais first-person imperfect indicative
- bâtissait imperfect indicative singular
- bâtissions first-person imperfect indicative
- bâtissiez imperfect indicative plural
- bâtissaient imperfect indicative plural
- bâtîmes first-person historic indicative
- bâtîtes historic indicative past
- avoir bâti infinitive past
- en bâtissant gerund present
Source: English Wiktionary and French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
How do you pronounce bâtir?
- /ba.tiʁ/
- /bɑ.tiʁ/
- \ba.tiʁ\
Sources: English Wiktionary, French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026); recordings from Wikimedia Commons.
English words that translate to bâtir
Source: the translation tables of the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026.
How common is bâtir in French?
bâtir appears 9.1 times per million words in written French.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).