enfoncer

Enfoncer is a French verb meaning to push, drive, sink or press something into a surface, and by extension to make something collapse, fail or be overwhelmed. It is used in both concrete physical senses (for example enfoncer un clou, to drive a nail in) and in figurative senses (enfoncer quelqu’un in sport or debate, to defeat or humiliate someone; s’enfoncer dans la pauvreté, to sink deeper into poverty).

Grammatically enfoncer is a transitive verb that also appears pronominally as s’enfoncer with intransitive and reflexive meanings such as to sink into, to become mired or to withdraw (une barque s’enfonce dans la boue; il s’enfonce dans le silence). Its principal parts include the present participle enfonçant and the past participle enfoncé; it conjugates with the auxiliary avoir in compound tenses. As with other verbs ending in -cer, the c becomes ç before the vowel a in the first-person plural present (nous enfonçons).

Common idiomatic expressions include enfoncer le clou (to drive the point home) and enfoncer la porte ouverte (to state the obvious). The verb derives from the prefix en- plus the root foncer and appears frequently in everyday and literary French to describe both literal and metaphorical acts of pressing, sinking or overwhelming.