The Adverbial Pronoun En: Its Odder Uses
En Absent Any Antecedent
We are interested here, firstly, in the adverbial pronoun 1 en (< Latin inde), not the preposition en (< Latin in), and, secondly, in cases where the form is used without any apparent antecedent, in idiomatic expressions. In theory, in proper French (this is the modern rule, anyway) the en-form should be used to replace an expression beginning with de. If there isn’t such a phrase in the preceding sentence or clause, then you shouldn’t use en. (It’s the famous rule: No [definite] pronouns without [obvious] antecedents. See the Writing Guide on the matter if you don’t believe that this is really a rule.) In a few set expressions (formules toute faites), however, the en has become incrusted and will appear even though there is no visible antecedent.
Table of Contents
- En Used in Place of a Possessive Pronoun (When son/sa/ses = “Its”)
- en aller (+ de même, + de…)
- s’en aller
- en appeler à
- en arriver à
- en avoir assez (de…)
- pour en avoir le cœur net
- en avoir marre (de…)
- en avoir plein le dos (de…)
- en avoir pour (durée)
- en avoir pour (son argent)
- en convenir
- en croire (mon expérience, etc.)
- en être (…)
- en être à
- en être pour…
- s’en faire (il ne faut pas)
- s’en faut (Peu… OR Tant…)
- (ne pas) en revenir
- s’en tenir à (= s’en limiter à)
- en venir à (= en arriver à)
- en venir à bout
- en vouloir à quelqu’un
En Used in Place of a Possessive Pronoun (When son/sa/ses = “Its”)
Well, all right, this is not really one of the cases I mentioned of en used in an idiomatic expression and without an antecedent. Nevertheless, I find it sufficiently weird that I want to list it with the other particularly odd uses of en. It is weird, because it corresponds to neither of the two normal functions of this form, which are:
- To replace a noun phrase introduced by a partitive article (du, de la, de l’, des, d’). In such cases, the noun phrase is always, I believe, functioning as a direct object.
Elle a acheté du chewing-gum. > Elle en a acheté. (She bought some chewing-gum. > She bought some.) - To replace a prepositional phrase introduced by the preposition de (functioning as a real preposition, not as part of the particle article).
Je m’occuperai des billets. > Je m’en occuperai. (I will take care of the tickets. > I will take care of them.)
But the use of en we are currently discussing is like neither of these. It is used to reduce the ambiguity of the third-person possessive adjective son/sa/ses, which can correspond to English “his,” “her,” or “its.” If the antecedent is inanimate, that is, neither human nor animal, the possessive adjective can be and often is replaced by en.
- Le facteur lui apporta un paquet. L’emballage en avait été partiellement détruit. (The postman brought hurrim a package. Its covering had been partially destroyed.)
- Regardez ce tableau! Les couleurs en sont superbes, vraiment de main de maître! (Look at this painting! Its colors are superb; truly by a master’s hand!)
Note that, in these examples, the en is attached to the subject. In its usual functions (replacing a noun phrase, or a prepositional phrase), the en replaces something that completes the verb. That is one oddity. Note also that the verbs are, in one case, in passive voice, and, in the other, the linking verb être. A corollary restriction: en used for this purpose cannot appear with any other pronoun object.
However, the en can also go with a noun serving as a direct object (in which case it is a little less surprising, at least to me). Observe the following, in which the second en is the one in question (the first en is dealt with further down, under en être):
« Si Jane Austen ne rejette à aucun moment ce rôle féminin, il n’en demeure pas moins qu’elle en montre la difficulté. » (“While Jane Austen does not reject at any moment this feminine rôle, it is nonetheless the case that she shows its difficulty [= the difficulty of it].”)—Marianne Camus
en aller (+ de même, + de…)
Two uses are particularly noteworthy.
Il en va de même pour…
means something like: “The same goes for.”
Les vedettes du football sont très bien payés. Il n’en va pas de même pour les vedettes du rugby. (Soccer stars are very well paid. The same does not go for rugby stars.)
Il en va de…
followed by a noun means: “(Noun) is at stake.”
Il en va de votre vie! (Your life is at stake!)
I have no good explanation, even a fanciful one, for how en came to be used here.
s’en aller
Aller means “to go,” but s’en aller means “to leave.” The reflexive pronoun is a leftover from medieval French, which occasionally added it to verbs that were not really reflexive, but that referred to an action considered particularly personal or inward. For example:
« Sire, fet-il, bien a .v. anz / que je ne soi ou je me fui. » (“Lord,” he said, “for a full five years / I have not known where I was.”) —Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval
As for the en, it undoubtedly replaces something like “from this place” = de cet endroit.
For more en aller, y aller, and s’en aller, see the relevant sections of French Language Files Imperative Mood and House of Being Verbs.
en appeler à
It means “to appeal to,” in the sense of to turn from the unfavorable judgment of a lower tribunal so as to obtain a reversal from another, higher, one.
- appeler d’une décisiion = “to appeal a decision”
- en appeler à une cour supérieure = “to appeal to a superior court”
- J’en appelle à la raison, à votre bon sens, à votre cœur! (I appeal to reason, to your common sense, to your heart!)
en arriver à
See en venir à below.
en avoir assez (de…)
The phrase can be used (without the additional de…) to mean quite straightforwardly: “Thank you, I’m full, I couldn’t eat other bite.” It is not considered rude (whereas, in English, to say “I’ve had enough!” in such a context would be quite surprising.) The en is replacing whatever the food or drink that seconds are being offered of:
Hôte. Voulez-vous encore du ragoût? (Host: “Would you like some more stew?”)
Invité. Non, merci. J’en ai assez. (Guest: “No, thanks. I couldn’t eat another bite.”)
However, the phrase can also mean “I’m fed up,” and there need not be a specific antecedent for the en. Moreover, if you do specify what it is you are fed up with, the en stays where it is, in spite of the fact that there is no need for it.
- J’en ai assez de vivre avec des goujats. (I’m tired of living with boors.)
- J’en ai assez de tes histoires. (I’m tired of your foolishness.)
Perhaps the construction is the telescoped form of a dialogue such as the following:
Personne A. J’en ai assez! (I’m fed up with it!)
Personne B. Assez de quoi? (With what?)
Personne A. Assez de tes conneries! (With your b——t!)
pour en avoir le cœur net
Used when you want to inform yourself with absolute certainly about a matter of importance. The adjective net here means “free of, clear of,” and the en replaces something like de cette préoccupation, de cette incertitude, de cette cause d’anxiété.
Pour en avoir le cœur net, faites-vous examiner par votre médecin. (To be perfectly sure, have your doctor examine you.)
en avoir marre (de…)
It means the same as en avoir assez (de…). Once again, the en stays in front of the verb even when the prepositional phrase with de is also present, such that the en and its antecedent double each other.
J’en ai marre de ces conneries. (I’m fed up with this b——t.)
en avoir plein le dos (de…)
The meaning is identical to en avoir marre (de…).
J’en ai plein le dos de ces conneries. (I’m sick and tired of this b——t.)
en avoir pour (durée)
The construction is used for saying how long an activity is going to take.
J’en ai pour cinq minutes. (It will take me [only!] five minutes.)
What in the world does the en replace? De ce travail? De cette activité? Should we imagine an underlying conversation like the following?
Personne A. J’ai encore de cette activité à faire. (I still have some of this activity to do.)
Personne B. Ah! bon. Pour combien de temps? (Oh, really. For how much time?)
Personne A. Pour cinq minutes. (For five minutes.)
en avoir pour (son argent)
It means: “to get something for your money.” The en clearly once replaced a phrase like du retour (some return).
Ainsi vous en aurez pour votre argent. (In that way you will get something for your money.)
en convenir
It occurs mostly parenthetically 2 as j’en conviens, je n’en disconviens pas, meaning: “I agree/admit, I don’t disagree.” The en is here replacing something like: de cette idée, de cette possibilité/probabilité.
Les armes à feu peuvent être dangereuses, je n’en disconviens pas. (Firearms can be dangerous, I don’t disagree.)
en croire (mon expérience, etc.)
To accept or trust a source of information on a particular point. The en means something like “in this matter.”
- Croyez-en ma vieille expérience. (I have had a lot of experience in this area and you should listen to me. More literally: Believe/Trust my old [=many years of] experience of/in this matter.)
- Je n’en crois pas mes yeux. (I can’t believe my eyes.)
- « Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain; / Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie. » (“Live, if you trust me in this matter, don’t wait till tomorrow; / Beginning today, pluck the roses of life.”) –Ronsard, Sonnets pour Hélène
en être (…)
Study the following, which I believe are connected uses:
S’il en est ainsi
means: “If things are thus.” Also:
Il n’en est rien
meaning: “That is not at all the case” or “Nothing could be farther from the truth.”
Il n’en est pas moins vrai (que…)
means: “It is nonetheless true (that…).”
Les Texans sont volontiers vantards. Il n’en est pas moins vrai que ce sont des gens charmants. (Texans are always ready to boast. It is nonetheless true that they are charming people.)
The construction can be made with a personal subject:
Ce problème, pour être caché, n’en est pas moins vrai. (This problem, although hidden, is nonetheless real.)
The construction Il n’en demeure pas moins has the same meaning as Il n’en est pas moins vrai:
« Si Jane Austen ne rejette à aucun moment ce rôle féminin, il n’en demeure pas moins qu’elle en montre la difficulté. » (“While Jane Austen does not reject at any moment this feminine rôle, it is nonetheless true that she shows its difficulty [= the difficulty of it].”)—Marianne Camus
Writers frequently add pour autant, meaning “for all that.” It is possible that the en was originally attached to the autant: “for [= in spite of] all [= so much, that much] of that [= the thing you have just mentioned].”
Dans la Guerre de Sécession, le Nord pouvait se réclamer d’une justification d’ordre moral. Il n’en est pas moins vrai pour autant que des raisons d’ordre économique ont aussi joué un rôle. (During the Civil War the North could lay claim to morally-based justification. It remains nonetheless true for all that that reasons of an economic sort also played a rôle.)
Quoi qu’il en soit
It is the French equivalent of English expressions such as “Be that as it may” or “Whatever the case may be.”
en être à
The construction is used to say where, that is at what point, you are in something that can be imagined as a line (i.e., as a succession of discrete points).
Personne A. Où en êtes-vous dans votre lecture des Pays lointains? 3 (Where are you in your reading of The Distant Lands?)
Personne B. J’en suis au chapitre 10. (I am in chapter 10.)
Personne C. J’en suis à la page 35. (I am on page 35.)
Personne D. J’en suis toujours à la première page. (I’m still on the first page.)
I explain the en to myself in the following way:
Je suis à la page 35 de ce roman. > J’en suis à la page 35.
(I am at/on page 35 of this novel. …)
The construction can be used in connection any activity that involves succession in space or time. (To be sure, succession in space is necessarily also succession in time. Right?)
Personne A. Où en êtes-vous dans votre projet? (Where are you in your project?)
Personne B. J’en suis aux premiers essais. (I am at the first trials.)
Personne A. Où en sont-ils dans le repas? (Where have they gotten to in the meal?)
Personne B. Ils en sont à la soupe. (They’ve gotten as far as the soup.)
en être pour…
Meaning: “to get no further than.”
“Il en fut pour son désir.” –Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, vol. 1
The meaning is something like: “His desire didn’t get him anywhere,” that is, he got no further than his desire.
s’en faire (il ne faut pas)
The sentence Il ne faut pas s’en faire means: “You musn’t worry.” LIterally, it translates as “It is necessary not to make any for yourself.” The en stands, I believe, for du mauvais sang, for one also finds, with the same meaning,
se faire du mauvais sang = “to make (some) bad blood for onself” = “to worry”‘
The basis for the expression is perhaps due to the stomach upset that sometimes comes with worry, interpreted (in humorist theory) as the result of too much black bile (taking “bad blood” to mean: blood with black bile mixed in)..
s’en faut (Peu… OR Tant…)
Peu s’en faut means: “Little is lacking” (understood: “to keep something from being the case, or to keep a person from doing this thing shurree is tempted to do”). The original meaning of falloir is “to fail = to be lacking”; what has come to be its more common meaning is a metaphorical outgrowth of the preceding, to wit, “to be necessary” (because it is lacking). There is no Il here, the impersonal apparent subject one usually finds with faut; instead, the actual “subject,” Peu, is at the head (where a subject belongs). The en stands for something like “of this thing it would take more of.” As for what the se (the reflexive pronoun) is doing in the expression: well, that is a very interesting question. See the remarks on s’en aller above.
Occasionally an author will begin with the usual Il and put peu behind the verb, thus:
Il s’en faut de peu = Peu s’en faut.
The phrase can come as an added little clause, in which case it functions adverbially and can be translated as “Practically = Nearly = As little as makes no difference,” or something similar.
Nous avons ramené le taux du chômage à zéro, ou peu s’en faut. (We have brought the rate of unemployment down to zero, or very close to that.)
With a noun clause following, the verb in that clause must be in the subjunctive, and the ne explétif may (but does not have to) be used. The literal meaning is something like: “Little is lacking but that (e.g., I should do a particular thing).”
Peu s’en faut que je (ne) lui dise ce que je pense d’elle. (I am about ready to tell her what I think about her. OR It wouldn’t take much to get me to…)
The related Tant s’en faut means: “That is far from being the case” (after a negative statement of some kind). Literally, it means: Tant = “(precisely) So much OR (precisely) That amount”; en = “of whatever the thing is it would take for this other thing to happen”; faut = “is lacking.”
Non que cette prévision soit sans fondement; tant s’en faut. (Not that this prediction has no basis; far from it OR quite the contrary.)
(ne pas) en revenir
Revenir d’une maladie means, literally, “to return from an illness” and consequently “to recover from OR get over an illness”; by extension, revenir de can be used for getting over a surprise or a shock. When the phrase is used in the negative, the en remains even when it isn’t strictly needed. Observe:
- Je n’en reviens pas! (I can’t get over it. [Literally, I am not getting over it.])
- Je n’en reviens pas du choc! (I can’t get over the shock.)
- Je n’en reviens pas que tu m’aies traité d’imbécile. (I can’t get over your calling me an imbecile.)
s’en tenir à (= s’en limiter à)
It means “to stick to” in the sense of “to limit oneself to.” Here, as in a number of a cases on this page, the en seems to mean “in this matter OR in these matters.”
« Pour l’instant, tenons-nous-en à ce que je vous ai dit. » (“For the moment, let’s stick to what I have told you.”) —Jules Romains, Docteur Knock
en venir à (= en arriver à)
It means to get to a particular point, that point being the logical next one after a number of previous points. It is the dynamic version of en être à. Here it is with a noun phrase following the preposition à:
Ils en sont venus aux mains. (They came to trading blows. [i.e., things went from bad to worse, until at last words weren’t enough and they resorted to fisticuffs])
Here is a less violent example. The famous Doctor Knock is giving dietary restrictions to a patient:
Le Tambour de la ville. Je puis manger? (The Town Crier. Can I eat?)
Knock. Aujourd’hui, comme vous travaillez, prenez un peu de potage. Demain, nous en viendrons aux restrictions plus sérieuses. (Today, as you work, take a little soup. Tomorrow we will get to the more serious restrictions.) —Jules Romains, Knock
Here it is with an infinitive following the preposition à:
Elle en est venue à m’injurier, à me traiter d’imbécile, de vaurien, de pire encore. (She reached the point of insulting me, of calling me an imbecile, a worthless person, and worse still.)
The en is a little harder to account for than was the case with en être à, but it still seems to amount to “in this succession, in this line of development.”
en venir à bout
It means “to get through / to get to the end of (something difficult).” The en must be replacing an expression such as de cette chose difficile:
en venir à bout = venir à bout de cette chose difficile = “to get to the end of this difficult thing”
en vouloir à quelqu’un
It means: “to be upset/angry/annoyed at someone, to hold a grudge against someone.” The en I imagine to be replacing something like du mal, direct object of vouloir:
en vouloir à quelqu’un = vouloir du mal à quelqu’un = “to wish evil on/to/for someone”
Examples:
- Tu m’en veux? (Are you angry with me?)
- Il lui en voulait de lui avoir volé sa femme. (He was angry at him for having stolen his wife from him.)
- If you dislike the expression “adverbial pronoun,” then feel free it call it instead (and the form y) a pronominal adverb.[↩]
- In what the French call une proposition incise[↩]
- Les Pays lointains (The Distant Lands) is a very long novel by Julien Green published in 1987.[↩]

Is the relative pronoun dont similar, in that it can refer either to the subject or to the indirect object of a verb or expression with de.
There is a parallelism between dont and en, because both forms replace a phrase beginning with de. A big difference between them is that dont CANNOT stand for a noun phrase introduced by a partitive article (du/de la/des/de), whereas en CAN function in that way. Unfortunately, although I do have a Language File on dont (see The Relative Adverb Dont), I do not (yet) have a separate Language File up dedicated to the ordinary (as opposed to strange) functions of the adverbial pronoun en. There is a place where I speak of it in my French for Reading Knowledge course, in section §62. The “Pronoun” En.