What is the difference between arrête and arrêtez?

Arrête is said to one person you call tu. Arrêtez is said to someone you call vous, or to several people.

French · phrasebook

How to say stop in French

Stop in French is arrête when you speak to one person you call tu, and arrêtez for someone you call vous or for a group. Both are the imperative of the same verb.

Aurélien CuvelierSep 19, 2026

arrête

stop

one person you call tu

The ways to say it

arrête

stop

one person you call tu

arrêtez

same meaning

someone you call vous, or several people

How to use it

The two exchanges below are one scene played twice: someone is talking too loudly and is asked to stop. Everything switches together between the versions: the imperative, the please that follows it, and the apology in the reply.

An imperative alone is abrupt in French, as it is in English. Both versions soften it with please straight after.

Watch out

The last letter of arrêtez is silent. It is greyed in the example, so the two forms differ by a vowel sound at the end, not by a consonant.

In a real conversation

Each exchange is a line and its reply. Greyed letters are written and not pronounced. A tie marks a liaison, with the sound you hear under it. A label under a verb names its tense when it is not the present.

Arrête, s'il te plaît, tu parles beaucoup trop fort.Stop, please, you are talking much too loud.Excuse-moi, je ne faisais pas attention.Sorry, I was not paying attention.

Arrêtez, s'il vous plaît, vous parlez beaucoup trop fort.Stop, please, you are talking much too loud.Excusez-moi, je ne faisais pas attention.Sorry, I was not paying attention.

Questions people ask

What is the difference between arrête and arrêtez?: Arrête is said to one person you call tu. Arrêtez is said to someone you call vous, or to several people.

More French phrases

Each one with its tu and vous forms, its register and real exchanges.

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Written by

Aurélien Cuvelier Founder, NuanceDeck

Aurélien Cuvelier builds NuanceDeck: the app, and the verification pipeline behind its dictionary. Every entry is grounded in the official TORFL lexical minimum and a 20,000-word frequency corpus, and every example sentence passes a certification review before it ships.

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