All about the French sentence "À tout de suite"

Get prepared to discover all the things you need to know about the basic phrase “À tout de suite”.

Including a full guide of what it is and how you can use it in everyday life with an audio example. And because we want you to make progress in French, we also added useful informations like synonyms, slow pronunciation audio, dialogue example and more!

In case you are interested, you will find more phrases guides like this one on this page plus the ultimate list of all our French words tutorials on this page. Have fun!

Table of Contents

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Translation in English

Pronunciation guide

Slow pronunciation

Normal pronunciation

What does it mean?

Definition

Use “À tout de suite” when you know you will see the person again that day, ideally in the next 30 minutes. If more than that, other expressions are more adequate, for example “À tout à l’heure” (See you later on that day).

That’s why we tend to use “À tout de suite” only when leaving for a few minutes, typically for a short break.

How to use

Here are the variations to use when you know you will see the person again (*the time frames aren’t fixed, but being too far from it might cause some misunderstandings).

  • À tout de suite / À toute / Je reviens tout de suite → 1 to 30 minutes*
  • À tout à l’heure / À toute / Je reviens → 30 minutes to later today*
  • À ce soir → This evening
  • À demain → Tomorrow
  • À lundi / mardi / mercredi… → Next Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday…
  • À la semaine prochaine → Next week

Magic trick: if having to choose between “À tout de suite” vs. “À tout à l’heure” annoys you, there is a simple trick. Just use “À toute” because it could mean both of them, and it’s shorter. But be careful, it’s informal.

Synonyms and similarities

Reminder: most of them are not “full synonyms“. Please check the “How to use” section above for more details.

Everyday life dialogue example with audio

Audio dialogue from French people

Dialogue audio

Dialogue script

” On se voit pour la réunion dans 20 minutes ? “
” See you for the meeting in 20 minutes? “
Ça marche, à tout de suite “
” Alright, see you very soon “
” À tout de suite “
” See you very soon “
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