Tout as adjective, pronoun and adverb

Tout le monde est là.Elle a tout compris.Elle est toute contente.Everyone is here.She understood everything.She's completely happy.

Tout is one of the most useful words in French, and also one of the trickiest, because it plays three different grammatical roles — adjective, pronoun, adverb — and each one follows its own agreement rules.

Quick shortcut: as an adjective, tout agrees with the noun (tout, toute, tous, toutes); as a pronoun, tout stays invariable for "everything", but tous/toutes agree when standing for a group of people or things; as an adverb meaning "completely", tout is usually invariable, but agrees before a feminine adjective that starts with a consonant or an aspirate h.

Tout as adjective: tout + noun

Here tout works like any other adjective placed before a noun, agreeing in gender and number:

• Tout le monde est là. (Everyone is here. — literally "all the world")
• Elle a travaillé toute la journée. (She worked all day.)
• Il vient tous les jours. (He comes every day.)
• Elle range toutes les semaines. (She tidies up every week.)

As an adjective, tout/tous usually pairs with a definite article, a possessive or a demonstrative right after it (tout le monde, tous mes amis, toute cette histoire). It can also come directly before a bare singular noun, meaning "any/every" in a general statement (tout enfant a le droit d'apprendre — every child has the right to learn), especially in formal or generalising sentences.

Tout as pronoun: invariable tout vs. agreeing tous/toutes

As a pronoun, tout has two different behaviours depending on what it stands for:

• Tout meaning "everything" (an unspecified whole, not a group of countable things) is invariable — it never changes form:
  • Il sait tout. (He knows everything.)
  • Tout va bien. (Everything is fine.)
• Tous and toutes, meaning "everyone" or "all of them", stand in for a specific group of people or things identified by the context — often already mentioned, but not always — and agree with that group:
  • Ils sont tous venus. (They all came. — a group of men, or a mixed group)
  • Mes sœurs ? Elles sont toutes parties. (My sisters? They've all left.)
  • Tous sont invités. (Everyone is invited. — the group is understood from context, with no earlier mention needed)

There's a well-known pronunciation detail here: as an adjective, the -s of tous is silent (tous les jours sounds like "too lay zhoor"). As a pronoun, that same -s is pronounced — Ils sont tous venus sounds like "ils sont touss venus". Hearing the -s is often the only clue that tous is standing alone as a pronoun rather than modifying a noun right next to it.

Tout as adverb: "completely, very"

Used before an adjective, tout works as an adverb meaning "completely" or "very". Adverbs are normally invariable in French, and tout mostly follows that rule here too — with one well-known exception:

• Before a masculine adjective, or a feminine adjective starting with a vowel or mute h, tout stays tout:
  • Il est tout content. (He's completely happy.)
  • Elle est tout heureuse. (She's completely happy. — feminine, but heureuse starts with a vowel sound)
• Before a feminine adjective starting with a consonant or an aspirate h, tout agrees with it, becoming toute/toutes:
  • ✅ Elle est toute contente., never ❌ Elle est tout contente. (feminine + consonant → agreement)
  • Elles sont toutes contentes. (feminine plural + consonant → agreement)
  • Elle est toute honteuse. (She's completely ashamed. — feminine, and honteuse starts with an aspirate h, so it counts like a consonant here)

This is a traditional exception, kept for euphony — it doesn't follow from a general rule of French grammar, so it just needs to be learned as its own case.

Common mistakes

• ❌ Elle est tout contente. → ✅ Elle est toute contente. (adverb must agree before a feminine adjective starting with a consonant or an aspirate h)
• ❌ Tous les femmes sont là. → ✅ Toutes les femmes sont là. (adjective tout must agree with a feminine noun)
• ❌ J'ai vu toute. → ✅ J'ai vu tout. (the pronoun "everything" is invariable — there's no group here to agree with)
• ❌ Elles sont venues, tout. → ✅ Elles sont venues, toutes. (a pronoun standing for a specific group of women must agree: toutes)

Quick check

Key takeaways

• As an adjective (tout, toute, tous, toutes), tout agrees with the noun that follows it, usually together with an article, possessive or demonstrative.
• As a pronoun, tout meaning "everything" is invariable, but tous/toutes meaning "everyone/all of them" agree with the group they stand for — and the pronoun's final -s is actually pronounced, unlike the silent -s of the adjective.
• As an adverb meaning "completely", tout is invariable before a masculine adjective or a feminine adjective starting with a vowel or mute h, but agrees (toute/toutes) before a feminine adjective starting with a consonant or an aspirate h.