The word "gesir"

[KB Norton]

Can anyone help with the french word "gesir"?

Aidez-moi quelqu'un avec ce diable de mot!

 

When I enter this word "gesir" into the translation in french-linguistics.com/dictionary, it is very odd as it always gives the Error Message :

        Sorry, the word gesi was not found.
        Le mot gesi n'a pas été trouvé.

It seems to search only for "gesi" and not "gesir" - this does not happen with any other word! For example "finir" does not search for "fini".

 

From my reliable old-fashioned paperback dictionary however, I know it means "to be lying down".  But what I want to know is how to conjugate it, because the present tense seems to be "je gis, tu gis, il git, gisons, gisez, gisent etc..." not "je gesis, tu gesit, il gesit, gesissons, gesissez, gesissent etc..." as a regular verb would be, and the imparfait seems to be "gisais,gisais,gisait... etc".  I guess therefore the present articiple must be "gisant", not "gesissant" ? But I can not find out what the past participle would be, (eg) "j'ai gesi, il a gesi...?" or "j'ai gi, il a gi...? Or what? Or the future, "je gesirai, il gesira...?" 

 

This verb is not listed in my "Verbes Irregulieres" and strangely causes the above-mentioned error in the online dictionary search.

 

[Clémence D.]

Bonsoir,

le verbe "gésir" est spécial en raison de son sens: comme tu l'as dit, il signifie "être couché", généralement malade ou mort. On trouve beaucoup ce verbe sur les pierres tombales par exemple.

Pour ce qui concerne les temps, il ne peut se conjuguer qu'au présent (je gis, tu gis...) et à l'imparfait (je gisais...)

http://www.la-conjugaison.fr/du/verbe/gesir.php

 

c'est étrange que tu ne le trouves pas dans ton traducteur et dans ta liste des verbes irréguliers mais il est vrai que l'on ne rencontre pas souvent ce verbe à l'infinitif: beaucoup de français ne connaisse même que sa forme à la 3ème personne du présent !

 

[KB Norton]

merci pour cette explication tres claire.

De ce que tu dis des tombaux, je viens juste de me rendre compte que le "ci-git" est le 3eme du present de ce mot gesir!  ce quii avait suscite ma curiosite c'etait de trouver le mot "gisait" sur un page de France-Info dans le contexte plutot interessant suivant :

"Je suis sortie et j’ai vu quelque chose de blanc qui gisait en travers de la route" raconte-t-elle à l’AFP, précisant que son voisinage n’a été que faiblement endommagé, "je l’ai retourné et c’était une échographie. Ca m’a fendu le cœur. Je suis mère de trois enfants. Je ne peux m’imaginer perdre des objets comme ça".

merci encore.

kb

[Clémence D.]

pas de quoi :)

 

effectivement, dans ce contexte le sujet est un objet inanimé et il y a un peu une idée d'impuissance et de désorde... je ne sais pas trop comment dire.. mais disons que ça n'a pas la même "valeur" que par exemple "j'ai vu quelque chose de blanc qui se trouvait en travers de la route"

 

 

 

 

 

[Neil Coffey]

I'll look into why searching for "gésir" in the dictionary doesn't work (the infinitive should be in), but it's just a bug -- don't take it as having any significance.

 

Essentially, though, I think you're worrying about a non-problem. To all intents and purposes, the verb gésir is obsolete.

 

The main form that just about survives in modern use is the 3rd person form gît ("lieth") and I suppose the imperfect form (gisait). So on tombstones you will see Ci gît... = "Here lieth..." -- but even this is archaic French, just as "lieth" is an archaic form of the English verb.

 

Occasionally, gît / gisait are used in a figurative sense, e.g. Là gît/gisait le problème ("There lies/lay the problem"), however as far as I can see this figurative use is now rare, and even professional translators that I have worked with have not heard of it.

 

Note also that if you ask the average educated French person which infinitive the verb form gît comes from (who would understand that e.g. finit comes from finir), they generally don't actually know. This means that it's not really appropriate to even say that gît is "part of the verb gésir" or talk about the idea of "conjugating" the verb gésir.

[KB Norton]

Interesting what you say about this peculiar word... almost dead and living on engraved on tombstones !

 

Is it perhaps also the source of the modern word "gite", I wonder?  (As in "lair", "resting place", etc)

And presumably the adjective "gisant", listed in my dictionary as meaning "recumbent".

 

Almost dead it may be, but not going quietly ...

kb

[Neil Coffey]

Yes, these words are related in that they share a common root ("gîte" isn't necessarily derived from the verb as such, just as monkeys and humans share a common ancestor, but it's not that humans actually evolved directly from monkeys. And so the existence of these words isn't really a sign of "gésir" going quietly in a strict sense-- rather that one branch of derivation is dying out while the other isn't, if that makes sense (again, just as if monkeys started to die out we wouldn't say that that was "humans not going quietly").