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pussent

Pussent is a historical French verb form. It is the third-person plural form of the imperfect subjunctive (subjonctif imparfait) of pouvoir, the verb meaning "to be able." This form appears in Old French and in early modern French literature. As an imperfect subjunctive, pussent is used in dependent clauses to express hypotheticals or contingencies in the past, typically after conjunctions like que. An example is Qu'ils pussent venir, translated as "that they could come" or "if they could come." In contemporary French, pussent is rarely used in everyday speech and is encountered mainly in historical texts, translations, or stylistic recreations of older language.

Etymology and related forms: pussent derives from the Latin posse through the traditional development of the

Use in modern linguistics: scholars study pussent to illustrate the shift away from the imperfect subjunctive

French
verb
pouvoir
and
the
historical
morphology
of
the
imperfect
subjunctive.
It
is
related
to
other
archaic
forms
such
as
fussent
(from
être)
used
in
similar
grammatical
constructions.
Because
of
these
archaic
patterns,
pussent
is
often
cited
in
grammars
and
dictionaries
as
an
example
of
the
evolution
of
French
verb
conjugation.
in
favor
of
present-subjunctive
analogs
or
periphrastic
constructions.
It
remains
primarily
of
interest
to
students
of
historical
French,
philology,
and
literature
rather
than
to
speakers
of
modern
French.