souhaitassent

Souhaitassent is the third-person plural imperfect subjunctive form of the French verb souhaiter, meaning to wish. It is produced with the stem souhait- plus the standard imperfect subjunctive ending -assent, yielding qu’ils souhaitassent for “they wished (that).” This form belongs to the literary and historical substrata of French and is seldom used in contemporary spoken language.

Usage and style: The imperfect subjunctive is largely replaced in modern French by the present subjunctive or by other tenses in indirect discourse. Souhaitassent appears primarily in classical literature, formal writing, or historical texts, often after verbs of wishing, hoping, or reporting speech in a past context. A typical modern-equivalent construction would be qu’ils souhaitent pouvoir venir or, in some contexts, qu’ils aient souhaité pouvoir venir, depending on aspect and tense.

Example: Ils espéraient que leurs amis souhaitassent pouvoir venir. In everyday usage, speakers would instead choose a present-subjunctive or a different tense: qu’ils souhaitent pouvoir venir or qu’ils aient souhaité pouvoir venir.

See also: Souhaiter, Subjonctif imparfait, Grammaire française.

Notes: Souhaitassent illustrates the broader pattern of -er verb endings in the imperfect subjunctive (that is, -asse, -asses, -ât, -assions, -assiez, -assent). While informative for linguistic and historical study, it serves as a reminder that many French verb forms have become archaic outside specialized registers.