craindre

From Middle French, from Old French criembre, criendre (later creindre), from Classical Latin tremere, present active infinitive of tremō, later altered into a regional Gallo-Romance Vulgar Latin form *cremere, with the initial c- under the influence of the Celtic root *krit- (Breton kridien, Scottish Gaelic crith)[1], ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *krey- (Latin tremō ultimately derives from Proto-Indo-European *trem- (“to tremble”)). Compare the similar Occitan crénher.

• audio

  (file)

• IPA^(key): /kʁɛ̃dʁ/

craindre

1. (transitive) to fear
2. (intransitive, slang) to suck (to be unwanted or bad)

   J'ai perdu mon portefeuille. — Merde, ça craint.

   I've lost my wallet. — Shit, that sucks.

• craindre que is followed by a subjunctive, and in addition takes a ne as a meaningless particle, e.g. in the following sentence:
• Je crains que le lac ne soit froid.
  • I fear that the lake is cold.

This verb is conjugated like peindre. It uses the same endings as rendre or vendre, but its -nd- becomes -gn- before a vowel, and its past participle ends in ‘t’ instead of a vowel.

• avoir peur
• redouter

• chat échaudé craint l'eau froide

• crainte
• trembler

• “craindre” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).