UsageOne of the most essential and irregular French verbs, used constantly for drinking anything (boire de l'eau, boire un café) and in a huge number of fixed expressions about alcohol specifically, since in context boire un verre often implies an alcoholic drink unless stated otherwise.
Examples- Je bois un café tous les matins. — I drink a coffee every morning.
- Ils ont bu toute la bouteille de vin. — They drank the whole bottle of wine.
- Tu veux boire quelque chose ? — Do you want something to drink?
Common mistakeBoire is highly irregular (je bois, nous buvons, ils boivent) — learners regularize it as if it followed -re verb patterns like vendre and produce forms like *je bois, nous boisons, which is wrong; the stem itself changes (buv-) in the nous/vous forms and the imperfect.
In real life- expression "Boire ou conduire, il faut choisir" — France's landmark road-safety slogan, launched in the 1980s and still cited over 40 years later as one of the country's most recognized public-safety campaigns.
- quote "Buvez toujours, vous ne mourrez jamais" — A line from Rabelais's Gargantua (1542), chapter V ("Les propos des bien ivres"), part of the novel's famously chaotic drinkers' dialogue.
- expression "Qui a bu boira" — A French proverb attested since the 17th century (with an earlier form traced to the 13th century) meaning old habits — especially drinking — are hard to break.