aisé

Aisé is a French adjective meaning comfortable or well-off, used to describe a person, a household, or a lifestyle characterized by ease and financial security. In modern usage it most often refers to economic comfort rather than keenness or ease of performing a task. The feminine form is aisée; the noun aise means ease or comfort, and aisance denotes ease or fluency in a skill or movement.

The masculine form aisé is used before masculine nouns (for example, un homme aisé or un poste aisé), while the feminine form aisée accompanies feminine nouns (une femme aisée, une vie aisée). Plural forms include les ménages aisés and les classes aisées.

Usage notes: "à l'aise" expresses a state of personal ease or physical comfort, whereas "aisé" denotes wealth or ease of life and is used attributively to describe people or conditions.

Semantic nuance: The term can carry a connotation of social privilege or upper-middle-class status, and may be neutral or evaluative depending on context.

Cross-linguistic note: In English, "well-off" or "of means" approximates the sense; "aisé" is rarely used outside French except in quoted or scholarly contexts.

See also: aise, aisance, à l'aise, bien loti.