Essential French Expression
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| Meaning | barely, hardly | |
| Literally | to pain / effort | |
| Register | normal | |
| Pronunciation |  |
[ah pehn] |
| IPA | [a pɛn] | |
Usage notes: À peine is a very common French expression, equivalent to the English adverbs "barely, hardly."
The literal translation can seem odd, but there is a certain logic to it. Peine has two meanings, both of which lend themselves to the idea of doing something with difficulty. Peine meaning "pain" hints at a reluctance to do more than is absolutely necessary, since it’s painful, while the other meaning of peine highlights the effort required for the task.
Par exemple…
| J’avais à peine terminé quand il est arrivé. | I’d barely finished when he arrived. | |
| Ce chiot a à peine deux mois. | This puppy is barely two months old. | |
| À peine savons-nous ce qui s’est passé. | We barely know what happened. |
Somewhat synonymous: ne … guère
À peine can also be used informally, as an interjection to express disbelief.
| – Je l’ai fait moi-même. | – I did it myself. | |
| – À peine ! | – Yeah, right! |
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Verb conjugation tables for more than 1,600 French verbs in all the simple and compound tenses and moods.
In English, we say that the vowels are “a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.” The last couple of words hint at one of the keys to understanding pronunciation: a vowel is not so much a letter as the sound represented by a letter or combination of letters.