bâtit

Bâtit is a French verb form that can be encountered in two related but distinct tenses of the verb bâtir, meaning to build. In contemporary usage it is most often seen in the present indicative (il bâtit) but it also appears as a form of the passé simple in literary or historical writing. Because the spelling is identical in these cases, context and punctuation are needed to determine the tense.

Origin and classification

Bâtir is a Romance-language verb that descends from Old French and shares cognates with related verbs in other Romance languages. The form bâtit appears in the standard conjugation patterns of -ir verbs in French.

Usage and context

In modern French, the passé simple is largely confined to formal, literary, or historical narratives and is typically replaced by the passé composé in everyday speech. The present tense form bâtit is common in regular discourse, meaning “he/she builds” or “he/she is building.” Because bâtit can represent more than one tense, readers rely on sentence context to disambiguate.

Conjugation highlights

Present indicative (examples for il/elle):

- il/elle bâtit (he/she builds)

- nous bâtissons, vous bâtissez, ils bâtissent

Passé simple (littéraire):

- il bâtit (he built)

- nous bâtîmes, vous bâtîtes, ils bâtirent

Notes

Because of identical spelling in the present and the passé simple for the third-person singular, distinguishing the tense often depends on surrounding text, punctuation, or explicit temporal cues.