travaillaient

Travaillaient is a French verb form that corresponds to the third-person plural imperfect indicative of travailler, meaning they were working or they used to work. The imperfect describes actions that were ongoing in the past, habitual past actions, or background information in a narrative.

In the imperfect, regular -er verbs use the stem travaill- with the endings -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient. Therefore, the imperfect forms include je travaillais, tu travaillais, il/elle travaillait, nous travaillions, vous travailliez, and ils/elles travaillaient. The specific form travaillaient appears when the subject is ils or elles.

The verb travailler itself originates from Old French travailler, which in turn comes from Latin tripaliare, meaning to torture with a tripod. The sense evolved from arduous labor to the general meaning of “to work.” In usage, travaillaient often appears in descriptive past scenes, habitual past actions, or ongoing past activities, as in a narrative: “Ils travaillaient sur le projet depuis deux semaines” or “Quand je suis arrivé, ils travaillaient encore.”

Usage notes: as an irregular-looking but regular-formation form within a regular -er verb paradigm, travaillaient shares the same orthographic rules as other imperfect forms of -er verbs. It is distinct from the passé composé, which would express a completed action, such as “Ils ont travaillé.”