croître

Croître is a French verb meaning to grow or to increase in size, number, or intensity. It is used in formal or literary contexts and is less common in everyday speech, where verbs such as grandir or augmenter are more typical. Croître can describe living beings (plants, populations), economies, or abstract quantities (la demande croît, the demand is growing).

Etymology: Croître comes from Latin crescere, through Old French croistre, and the modern spelling preserves a circumflex on the i. The related noun croissance means growth or increase, while croissant is the present participle or adjective meaning increasing and also the name of a pastry.

Conjugation: In the present tense the forms are: je croîs, tu croîs, il croît, nous croissons, vous croissez, ils croissent. The past participle is crû, used with auxiliary avoir to form tenses such as the passé composé: j'ai crû, tu as crû, il a crû, nous avons crû, vous avez crû, ils ont crû. More complete conjugations exist (imparfait: croissais, croissais, croissait, croissions, croissiez, croissaient; futur: croîtrai, croîtras, croîtra, croîtrons, croîtrez, croîtront; conditionnel: croîtrais, croîtrais, croîtrait, croîtrions, croîtriez, croîtraient).

Usage: Croître tends to appear in statistics, biology, economics, and formal prose to emphasize gradual or ongoing growth. In everyday language, augmenter or grandir may be preferred for more common contexts. The noun croissance (growth, increase) and the related adjective croissant (increasing) derive from the same verb.

See also: croissance, croissant.