Past Infinitive in French

In Brief

The French past infinitive expresses an action completed before another action: avoir or être in the infinitive + a past participle (a verb form such as mangé, “eaten,” or parti, “left”). Compare avant de partir (“before leaving”) with après être parti (“after leaving”). It is especially common after après, after verbs such as regretter, and in expressions such as merci de.

Overview

The infinitive is the basic, unconjugated form of a verb, such as manger (“to eat”) or partir (“to leave”). French also has a past infinitive, called l’infinitif passé. Despite its name, it is not a tense used as the main verb of a sentence. It is a two-part non-finite form that presents an action as already complete relative to another action or reference point.

This B2 structure builds directly on the passé composé. The ingredients are the same—an auxiliary (the helping verb avoir or être) and a past participle—but the auxiliary stays in the infinitive: avoir mangé, être parti. There is therefore no person-based conjugation inside the form. Time comes from the surrounding sentence: Je regrette d’avoir parlé refers to a past action, while Vous serez remboursé après avoir envoyé le formulaire places the completed action in the future.

For an English-speaking learner, the most useful translations are often “having done,” “after doing,” or simply a natural finite clause. French uses the form more systematically than English in phrases such as merci d’être venu, literally “thank you for having come” but naturally “thank you for coming.” The goal is not to translate every word; it is to recognize the relationship “completed action first, main action second.”

How It Works

The basic formation

Verb type	Pattern	Example	Meaning
Most verbs	avoir + past participle	avoir fini	to have finished / having finished
Verbs that take être in compound forms	être + past participle	être arrivé(e)	to have arrived / having arrived
Reflexive verbs	reflexive pronoun + être + past participle	s’être levé(e)	to have got up / having got up

Use the same auxiliary that the verb takes in the passé composé:

• J’ai compris → avoir compris
• Elle est partie → être partie
• Nous nous sommes trompés → nous être trompés or, without an expressed subject pronoun, s’être trompé

The past participle itself is also the same. Regular -er verbs end in -é (parler → parlé), regular -ir verbs such as finir end in -i (fini), and regular -re verbs end in -u (vendre → vendu). Common irregular forms include fait (faire), dit (dire), vu (voir), pris (prendre), écrit (écrire), and eu (avoir).

Choosing between the present and past infinitive

The ordinary, or present, infinitive does not itself mark an action as complete. The past infinitive does.

Relationship	French	Natural English
Action still to happen	avant de signer	before signing
Action completed first	après avoir signé	after signing / after having signed
Simultaneous or general action	Il aime cuisiner.	He likes cooking.
Earlier completed action	Il regrette d’avoir cuisiné autant.	He regrets having cooked so much.

This contrast is particularly clear with avant de and après. French normally uses avant de + present infinitive, but après + past infinitive:

• Avant de sortir, ferme la fenêtre. — Before going out, close the window.
• Après être sorti, il a appelé un taxi. — After going out, he called a taxi.

Do not add de after après: the structure is après avoir... or après être..., not après d’avoir....

The understood subject

In an infinitive phrase, the person doing the infinitive action is normally understood from the main clause. In Après avoir mangé, Léa est sortie, Léa both ate and went out. This shared-subject pattern keeps the sentence compact.

If the two actions have different subjects, use a clause with a conjugated verb, most commonly après que:

• Après que Léa a mangé, Paul est sorti. — After Léa ate, Paul went out.

A dangling infinitive—one whose understood subject does not match the main subject—can create an unintended or illogical meaning. English sometimes tolerates loose “after doing” phrases in informal use, but careful French requires the relationship to be clear.

Object and adverbial pronouns

Pronouns belonging to the infinitive go immediately before the auxiliary infinitive. An object pronoun is a short word replacing the person or thing affected by the action.

• *après **l’*avoir vu — after seeing him/it
• après lui avoir parlé — after speaking to him/her
• sans en avoir discuté — without discussing it
• je regrette d’y être allé — I regret going there
• merci de nous avoir aidés — thank you for helping us

The order is therefore not copied from English. Learn the whole chunk: l’avoir fait, leur avoir écrit, y être allé.

Negation

With a past infinitive, the usual negative words surround the auxiliary infinitive rather than the past participle:

• ne pas avoir compris — not to have understood / not having understood
• ne jamais être allé en Suisse — never to have been to Switzerland
• ne rien avoir oublié — not to have forgotten anything
• ne plus avoir besoin d’aide — no longer to have needed help, depending on context

After another word requiring de, written French may produce de ne pas avoir...: Je regrette de ne pas avoir répondu. In speech, ne is often dropped, but it remains standard in careful writing.

Agreement of the past participle

The usual compound-tense agreement rules still apply.

With être, the participle normally agrees with the understood subject in gender and number:

• Après être arrivé, Marc a téléphoné.
• Après être arrivée, Inès a téléphoné.
• Après être arrivées, les voyageuses ont récupéré leurs bagages.

With avoir, the participle normally does not agree with the subject: Après avoir terminé, elles sont parties. However, it agrees with a direct object placed before it under the standard written rule: les erreurs que je regrette d’avoir faites. A direct object is the person or thing acted on without a preposition; here, que stands for les erreurs and comes before faites.

Reflexive verbs follow the same agreement rules as in other compound forms, and some cases depend on whether the reflexive pronoun is direct or indirect: Elle regrette de s’être trompée, but Ils regrettent de s’être parlé si durement. These finer distinctions are addressed again under Advanced Use.

Examples in Context

French	English	Note
Après avoir mangé, je suis sorti.	After eating, I went out.	Manger takes avoir.
Après être arrivé, il a appelé.	After arriving, he called.	Arriver takes être; masculine singular subject.
Après être arrivées à l’hôtel, elles se sont reposées.	After arriving at the hotel, they rested.	The participle agrees with a feminine plural subject.
Je regrette d’avoir dit cela.	I regret having said that.	The speaking happened before the regret.
Merci d’être venu.	Thank you for coming.	Said to one male person.
Merci de nous avoir prévenus.	Thank you for warning us.	The object pronoun comes before avoir.
Elle est partie sans avoir fermé la porte.	She left without closing the door.	Sans avoir presents an omitted completed action.
Il nie avoir reçu le message.	He denies having received the message.	Common after nier.
Nous sommes désolés de ne pas avoir répondu plus tôt.	We are sorry not to have replied sooner.	Negation surrounds avoir.
Après s’être levée, Nora a préparé du café.	After getting up, Nora made coffee.	Reflexive form with agreement.
Vous recevrez un reçu après avoir payé.	You will receive a receipt after paying.	Both actions are future, but payment is completed first.
Il semble avoir oublié notre rendez-vous.	He seems to have forgotten our appointment.	The past infinitive marks an earlier apparent event.
C’est la première fois qu’elle regrette d’y être allée.	It is the first time she has regretted going there.	Y precedes être; allée agrees with elle.
Les décisions qu’il affirme avoir prises étaient difficiles.	The decisions he claims to have made were difficult.	Advanced agreement with preceding que.

Common Mistakes

Adding de after après

• Wrong: Après d’avoir mangé, nous sommes partis.
• Right: Après avoir mangé, nous sommes partis.
• Why: Après takes the past infinitive directly. The likely source of the mistake is the correct expression avant de manger.

Using avoir for every verb

• Wrong: Après avoir arrivé, elle a téléphoné.
• Right: Après être arrivée, elle a téléphoné.
• Why: Choose the same auxiliary as in the passé composé: elle est arrivée, so the infinitive is être arrivée.

Forgetting that the two actions need the same subject

• Wrong: Après avoir terminé son travail, la télévision a été allumée par Hugo.
• Right: Après avoir terminé son travail, Hugo a allumé la télévision.
• Why: In the wrong version, grammar makes la télévision the understood subject of avoir terminé. Name the real doer as the main-clause subject, or use après que with a full clause.

Putting a pronoun after the participle

• Wrong: Merci d’avoir aidé nous.
• Right: Merci de nous avoir aidés.
• Why: A pronoun attached to the past infinitive comes before avoir or être. Here nous is also the preceding direct object, so careful writing marks plural agreement in aidés (or aidées for an all-female group).

Misplacing the negative words

• Wrong: Je regrette d’avoir pas compris.
• Right: Je regrette de ne pas avoir compris.
• Why: In standard French, ne... pas surrounds the auxiliary infinitive: ne pas avoir.

Translating English “after doing” with a present infinitive

• Wrong: Après manger, nous avons commandé un café.
• Right: Après avoir mangé, nous avons commandé un café.
• Why: When “after doing” refers to a completed action, French uses après + infinitif passé.

Usage Notes

The past infinitive is natural in both speech and writing. Après avoir/être is one of its most frequent environments. It is often smoother and less repetitive than a full après que clause when both actions have the same subject.

Several verbs and expressions use de + past infinitive to look back on a completed event: regretter d’avoir... (“to regret having...”), être désolé d’avoir... (“to be sorry for having...”), être heureux d’avoir... (“to be happy to have...”), and remercier quelqu’un d’avoir... (“to thank someone for having...”). In Merci d’être venu, French explicitly presents the visit as completed even though natural English usually says simply “Thank you for coming.”

Other verbs can take the form without de, especially when reporting a claim, appearance, or attitude toward a previous event: nier avoir menti (“deny having lied”), admettre avoir oublié (“admit having forgotten”), affirmer avoir vu (“claim/state that one saw”), sembler avoir compris (“seem to have understood”). The preposition is controlled by the expression before the infinitive; it is not part of the past infinitive itself.

English translations are not always visibly “past.” For example, après avoir payé is normally “after paying,” not the heavier “after having paid.” Use “having done” as a learning aid, then choose whatever translation sounds natural while preserving the order of events.

Beyond the Basics: Advanced Use

Relative time, not simply past time

The word “past” can be misleading. The past infinitive marks anteriority—in plain terms, one action is already complete before the reference action. It does not independently locate the whole sentence in the past:

• Je partirai après avoir fini. — I will leave after finishing.
• Il croit avoir réussi. — He believes he has succeeded.
• Elle aurait aimé avoir étudié à Lyon. — She would have liked to have studied in Lyon.

The main verb supplies the broader time frame. This makes the form useful for precise sequencing across past, present, future, and conditional contexts.

Active, movement, and passive-looking forms

Do not confuse être + past participle used as the compound form of a movement/reflexive verb with a passive construction:

• être parti — to have left (partir selects être)
• s’être trompé — to have been mistaken / to have made a mistake (reflexive compound form)
• avoir été invité — to have been invited (past infinitive of the passive être invité)

A completed passive therefore normally contains three elements: avoir été + past participle. For example, Elle est heureuse d’avoir été choisie means “She is happy to have been chosen.” Choisie agrees with the passive subject elle.

Fine points of agreement

With reflexive verbs, agreement depends on the role of the reflexive pronoun. In Après s’être lavée, se is the direct object and the feminine subject is reflected in lavée. In Après s’être lavé les mains, les mains is the direct object after the verb, so standard spelling leaves lavé unchanged. With se parler, the pronoun is indirect because French says parler à quelqu’un: Après s’être parlé, elles ont trouvé une solution.

With avoir, preceding-object agreement is most visible in formal writing: les photos qu’elle affirme avoir prises. In everyday speech, these endings are often inaudible, but they still matter in edited prose and examinations. The safest method is to identify the direct object and ask whether it appears before the participle.

More formal compressed structures

Formal writing uses the past infinitive to compress information after reporting verbs and in administrative instructions:

• Le témoin reconnaît avoir quitté les lieux. — The witness admits having left the scene.
• Après avoir rempli le formulaire, veuillez le signer. — After completing the form, please sign it.
• Faute d’avoir répondu à temps, sa demande a été rejetée. — Because he/she failed to reply in time, the application was rejected.

These are not different formations; they extend the same completed-action logic into denser registers. Always check that the understood subject remains clear.

Practice Tips

1. Build pairs from the passé composé. Write elle a compris, il est parti, and elles se sont levées, then convert them to avoir compris, être parti, and s’être levées. This reinforces auxiliary choice and agreement at the same time.
2. Tell a two-step story. Take everyday sequences—eat/leave, finish/send, arrive/call—and connect them with après: Après avoir fini le rapport, je l’ai envoyé. Change the main tense to see that the first action remains completed: je l’enverrai après avoir fini.
3. Practise in chunks, including pronouns and negatives. Say or write l’avoir vu, lui avoir répondu, ne pas avoir compris, and ne jamais y être allé. Whole chunks are easier to retrieve than a word-order rule during conversation.

Related Concepts

• Prerequisite: Passé Composé — supplies the auxiliary choice, past participles, and agreement rules reused by the past infinitive.