How do you describe someone's appearance in French?

Use avoir for features and être for overall qualities: il a les cheveux bruns et les yeux verts, elle est grande et mince. Note that French says 'he has the brown hair' with a definite article, not 'brown hair'.

Which French adjectives go before the noun?

Most adjectives follow the noun, but a small group goes before it: beau, joli, jeune, vieux, bon, mauvais, grand, petit, gros, nouveau. A common memory aid is BAGS — Beauty, Age, Goodness, Size. Everything else, including colours, comes after.

Why does 'un homme grand' mean something different from 'un grand homme'?

A few adjectives change meaning with position. Un homme grand is a tall man; un grand homme is a great man. Similarly un ancien professeur is a former teacher while un professeur ancien is an old one. Position carries meaning, not just style.

How does adjective agreement work in French?

Adjectives agree with the noun in gender and number: petit, petite, petits, petites. The written change is often silent, but adding an e can make a final consonant audible — grand sounds like grahn while grande sounds like grahnd.

Describing People in French: Qui Est-Ce ?

Describing a person is one of the first tasks in every French exam and one of the most common in real life — telling a friend who you met, identifying someone in a photo, explaining who you are waiting for. It needs three things: the right verb, the right vocabulary, and the adjective rules that French insists on.

🎬 Listen to the description and guess who it is.

Avoir or être?

This split catches everyone. The rule is simple once stated:

avoir for features — parts of the body: il a les cheveux bruns, elle a les yeux verts.
être for overall qualities: elle est grande, il est sympa.

Notice the article: French says il a les cheveux bruns — literally "he has the brown hair". Using des there is a classic learner error.

Appearance

Hair: les cheveux (always plural) — bruns, blonds, roux, châtains, gris, blancs; courts, longs, raides, bouclés, frisés
Eyes: les yeux — bleus, verts, marron, noisette. marron and noisette never agree: les yeux marron, no s.
Build: grand / petit, mince (slim), costaud (sturdy), musclé
Age: jeune, âgé, d'un certain âge (a polite way of saying older)
Details: il porte des lunettes (glasses), il a une barbe (a beard), elle a des taches de rousseur (freckles)

For the rest of the body, see body parts in French.

Personality

sympa — nice (short for sympathique; invariable, no e)
gentil / gentille — kind
drôle — funny · marrant — funny (casual)
timide — shy · bavard — chatty
sérieux / sérieuse — serious · travailleur / travailleuse — hard-working
têtu — stubborn · râleur — someone who moans a lot (very French)

Where does the adjective go?

In French, adjectives normally come after the noun — une femme intelligente, les yeux verts. A small group goes before, often remembered as BAGS:

Beauty — beau, joli
Age — jeune, vieux, nouveau
Goodness — bon, mauvais, gentil
Size — grand, petit, gros

So: une jolie femme blonde — one of each.

⚠️ When position changes the meaning

un homme grand = a tall man · un grand homme = a great man
un ancien professeur = a former teacher · un professeur ancien = an old teacher
mon propre livre = my own book · mon livre propre = my clean book

Agreement, and why you can hear it

Adjectives match the noun in gender and number: petit, petite, petits, petites. The s is silent, but the e is not neutral — it makes the preceding consonant audible:

grand → grahn · grande → grahnd
petit → pe-tee · petite → pe-teet

So agreement is not only a spelling rule — listeners hear it. There is more on this in the pronunciation guide.

Put it together

C'est une jeune femme assez grande, elle a les cheveux longs et bouclés, les yeux marron, et elle porte des lunettes. Elle est très sympa mais un peu timide.

That is a complete, exam-ready description in two sentences. Swap the details and you can describe anyone.

More guessing practice

Same skill, new descriptions.

Practise this on your own

Reading about describing people is the easy half — you only own it once you've produced it yourself. On parisly.app you can work through this material at your own pace — reading, listening, writing and speaking practice with feedback, so the vocabulary in this lesson turns into French you can actually use.

Next: family vocabulary to say who the person is to you, or talking to your crush if the description is heading somewhere. To practise describing people out loud, book a first lesson.