Chauffer is a kitchen-and-apartment verb. You need it to talk about heating bills (chauffer au gaz, à l'électricité), about cooking (faire chauffer de l'eau), and about a car or a laptop that is running hot. It works both transitively, with an object, and intransitively, describing something warming up on its own — a flexibility English splits between “heat” and “heat up.” The related words are everywhere too: le chauffage, un chauffe-eau, le chauffard.
Chauffer is a fully regular first-group verb, so there is no stem change anywhere in the table: chauff- carries every form. The double f belongs to the stem and never drops. The places to be careful are the ones every -er verb shares. The je, tu and il forms of the present sound identical (chauffe, chauffes, chauffe) but are spelled differently. The future adds -er- before the ending, so je chaufferai has two more letters than the present je chauffe. And the subjunctive matches the present except in nous chauffions and vous chauffiez, where an i appears before the ending, exactly as in the imperfect.
Chauffer in context
Présent
Le radiateur du salon chauffe mal depuis l'hiver dernier. The radiator in the living room hasn't heated properly since last winter.
Imparfait
Avant, on chauffait la maison au bois. We used to heat the house with wood.
Passé composé
J'ai chauffé la soupe deux minutes au micro-ondes. I heated the soup for two minutes in the microwave.
Futur simple
Nous chaufferons moins cet hiver pour réduire la facture. We'll heat less this winter to bring the bill down.
Subjonctif présent
Il faut que tu chauffes le lait avant d'ajouter le chocolat. You need to heat the milk before adding the chocolate.
Common mistakes with chauffer
Future written as conditional
✗ Demain je chaufferais le four à deux cents degrés.
✓ Demain je chaufferai le four à deux cents degrés. — Tomorrow I'll heat the oven to two hundred degrees.
One letter separates the two tenses in the je form: -ai is the future, -ais the conditional. Demain is a plain statement about the future, so it takes chaufferai. Keep chaufferais for a hypothesis: je chaufferais le four si j'avais le temps.
Missing the i in the subjunctive nous form
✗ Il faut que nous chauffons la salle avant le concert.
✓ Il faut que nous chauffions la salle avant le concert. — We need to heat the room before the concert.
For -er verbs the subjunctive looks exactly like the present except in the nous and vous forms, which take an extra i: que nous chauffions, que vous chauffiez. Those two are also the imperfect forms, so context tells them apart.
Using chauffer for leftovers
✗ Je vais chauffer les restes d'hier.
✓ Je vais réchauffer les restes d'hier. — I'm going to reheat yesterday's leftovers.
Chauffer heats something for the first time; réchauffer heats something that was already hot once. Food that has gone cold is almost always réchauffé, and a person warming up after being outside se réchauffe.
Expressions with chauffer
faire chauffer de l'eau
to put water on to heat
ça chauffe
things are heating up, there's trouble brewing
chauffer la salle
to warm up the audience
se chauffer au bois
to heat one's home with wood
Frequently asked questions
Is chauffer a regular verb?
Yes, it is a regular first-group -er verb with no stem change in any tense. Once you can conjugate parler you can conjugate chauffer: the endings are identical and chauff- stays constant from je chauffe through nous chaufferons to que vous chauffiez.
What is the past participle of chauffer?
It is chauffé, so the passé composé is j'ai chauffé. As with any avoir verb, it agrees only when the direct object comes first: la pièce que j'ai chauffée. Chauffé is also used as an adjective: une piscine chauffée, un débat chauffé.
What is the difference between chauffer and réchauffer?
Chauffer raises the temperature of something; réchauffer raises it again after it has cooled. You chauffe an oven or a house, and you réchauffe soup from yesterday. The reflexive se réchauffer means to warm yourself up, which is what you do after coming in from the cold.
Can chauffer be used without an object?
Yes, and it is common. With an object it means to heat something: je chauffe l'eau. Without one it describes something getting hot by itself: l'eau chauffe, le moteur chauffe. The second use often signals a problem when the subject is a machine.
How do you say “the heating” in French?
Le chauffage, the noun built on this verb: mettre le chauffage, la facture de chauffage, le chauffage central. A water heater is un chauffe-eau, and the verb phrase for how a home is heated is se chauffer à: on se chauffe au gaz.