passé composé

[pah-sey kawn-poh-zey]

noun French.

a grammatical construction of French consisting of the present tense of an auxiliary, either avoir or être, followed by a past participle and corresponding in function to both the English present perfect and the English simple past tenses.

Origin of passé composé

literally, compound past

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018