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# devait — French to English

How French *devait* is translated into English in open, checked parallel texts: 1 translation with example sentences.

The Elamur Dictionary has no French section yet; the English translations below link to their meanings where it has them.

Sentence pairs counted, by form: devait (75 739). By style: everyday 199 · literary 40 · biblical 65 · parliamentary 3 618 · legal and administrative 4 859 · UN documents 66 958.

## must

Used about 8 897 times in the texts (everyday ≈ 33 · literary ≈ 13 · biblical ≈ 3 · parliamentary ≈ 377 · legal and administrative ≈ 101 · UN documents ≈ 8 370). Meaning: [must in the Elamur Dictionary](https://dictionary.elamur.ai/free/en/english/must/).

- Tom **devait** s'attendre à quelque chose.
  Tom **must**'ve expected something.
  ([Tatoeba](https://tatoeba.org/) · Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR · sentences by Igider and CK · checked, community translation · [\#12691510](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/12691510) [\#12692839](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/12692839))

- Ce **devait** être là l'affaire.
  That **must** be the affair.
  ([Project Gutenberg books (Verne, Hugo, Maupassant and their translators)](https://www.gutenberg.org/) · Project Gutenberg, public domain · checked, professional translation · hugo les miserables, row 16804)

- Le jour des pains sans levain, où l’on **devait** immoler la Pâque, arriva,
  The day of unleavened bread came, on which the Passover **must** be sacrificed.
  ([World English Bible and Louis Segond 1910](https://ebible.org/) · World English Bible; Louis Segond 1910; public domain, eBible.org · checked, professional translation · LUK 22:7)

- Cela **devait** être la ligne socialiste.
  That **must** have been socialist policy.
  ([Europarl v8](https://www.statmt.org/europarl/) · Source: European Parliament proceedings, Europarl v8 (Koehn 2005) via OPUS (Tiedemann 2012) · checked, professional translation · segment 2006438)

- La Commission a fait observer que toute comparaison des parts de marché de l'industrie de l'Union entre la période 1999-2000 et la période 2016-2017 **devait** tenir compte du contexte général.
  The Commission noted that comparing the market shares of the Union industry in 1999-2000 and 2016-2017 **must** take into account the broader context.
  ([DGT-TM v2021](https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/language-technology-resources/dgt-translation-memory_en) · Source: European Commission, DGT-TM (Steinberger et al. 2012), re-used under Commission Decision 2011/833/EU; the Commission keeps ownership of the data · checked, professional translation · segment 4724791)

## More sentences

Sentence pairs with the word where no single translation was found: it may be translated by a phrase, or left out.

- Tom n'était pas certain de ce qu'il **devait** faire.
  Tom was unsure what to do.
  ([Tatoeba](https://tatoeba.org/) · Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR · sentences by Yemana and CK · checked, community translation · [\#2835737](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/2835737) [\#5655205](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/5655205))

- Il ne **devait** plus jamais revenir dans sa ville natale.
  He was never to return to his home town.
  ([Tatoeba](https://tatoeba.org/) · Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR · sentences by sacredceltic and sundown · checked, community translation · [\#9199618](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/9199618) [\#1579703](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/1579703))

- Je me demande si Tom a oublié de dire à Marie qu'elle **devait** faire ça.
  I wonder if Tom forgot to tell Mary she needed to do that.
  ([Tatoeba](https://tatoeba.org/) · Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR · sentences by tieguy and CK · checked, community translation · [\#6337060](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/6337060) [\#11784896](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/11784896))

## Grammar

Notes on grammar and translation on Mova: [French grammar](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/fr/) · [English grammar](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/) · [translating between English and French](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/translation/pairs/en-fr/) · [translating from French](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/translation/from-fr/) · [translating into English](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/translation/into-en/).

## About these examples

Translations are found by how often the two words stand in the same sentence pairs, and the highlighted words are matched automatically: both are approximate. Counts are estimated from a sample of each source. Every example names its source and licence. [Submit a better translation or example](https://md.translate.elamur.ai/free/en/submit/?pair=fr-en&word=devait).


Every example is quoted under its source's licence and credited with it; the rest of the site is open under the Elamur Cosmic License.