près

Old French pres (“closely”), from Vulgar Latin *presso, from Latin pressus (“concise”), from premere. Cognate with Italian presso and Sicilian pressu.

• IPA^(key): /pʁɛ/

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près

1. near (a time or a place); close (to a time or a place)

   Mon anniversaire est très près. ― It's my birthday soon.

   J'habite tout près. ― I live just nearby.

• proche

près

1. (formal or law) attached to, connects a person or an organisation delegated officially to a setting.

   un expert près les tribunaux ― an expert witness

   les procureurs près les tribunaux ― court-appointed prosecutors

   l'ambassade de France près le Saint-Siège ― the French Embassy to the Holy See

   l'ambassadeur près le Saint-Siège ― the ambassador to the Holy See

   près is only used with the embassies and ambassadors connected to the Vatican, as they are actually located outside, in Rome. All the other embassies and ambassadorial titles use common prepositions en, à, au or aux before host nations' names. (See Ambassades de France)

• auprès de

• When used as a preposition (before a noun), près must be immediately followed by de (près de). The rare exceptions belong to a very formal register listed above. For everyday speech and writing, près de is to be used to mean "near something".
• The adverbial phrases de près (“closely”) and à peu près (“approximately”) can be used without de after them.

• après
• de près
• près de
• presque
• à ... près (within such and such)
• à peu près

• pers, reps

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

Old French pres (“closely”). See above.

près

1. near

• lon