accroissent

Accroissent is the third-person plural form in the present tense of the French verb accroître. Accroître means to increase, raise, or expand, and is used for quantities, values, or intensity. The infinitive accroître comes from Latin accrescere (from ad- “toward” + crescere “to grow”), passing through Old French into modern French. The form accroissent is identical in the present indicative and the present subjunctive for third person plural, so the mood is determined by context.

Usage and nuance: Accroître is a formal, often technical verb found in statistics, economics, policy, and scholarly writing, but it can appear in general prose as well. It typically takes a direct object, such as accroître les recettes, accroître la productivité, or accroître la densité. It can also describe growth or expansion of non-tangible phenomena, like l’influence or la complexité.

Examples:

- Les investissements accroissent la productivité.

- La population urbaine accroît la demande de services publics.

Related forms and synonyms: Other verbs expressing increase include augmenter and croître. Accroître can carry a nuance of deliberate or cumulative growth, often implying targeted action or measurable change.

See also: accroissement (the noun meaning the act or result of increasing), augmentation, croissance.

This article provides a concise overview of the term accroissent as a grammatical form and its typical semantic usage in French.