I don’t think this is the box that this toy came in; it won’t fit in.
rentrer
verbe intransitif (auxiliaire être)
[s’emboîter] to go ou to fit in
les rallonges rentrent sous la table = the leaves fit in under the table
© Larousse 2014
What’s your question here ? The translation seems fine to me, and the definition seems to confirm that it is correct… Doesn’t it?
This comment and thread is attached to a French sentence in Clozemaster. That Clozemaster sentence is also included for reference at the top of the page here. I post the definition like this if it seems like an unusual usage for that particular sentence. Sometimes I spend an hour or more researching a term so then I post it because somebody else might not have the time to look in seven different dictionaries or books to see how something is supposed to be used.
Not everything can be learned from a book or an app. Sometimes more senior members (than I am) post and say that this word is the wrong word for that or I wouldn’t say it that way. It can spark a conversation about something that could be controversial. Some here (as well as myself) like to do a deeper dive on the meaning of a word, or a better way to say it. I’ve only been learning French for a couple years, so this discussions are helpful to me and hopefully others. I’m in the midwestern US, so there are few French speakers here in my not very big town. We have enough for a decent Beaujolais Nouveau party, lol.
The sentences on Clozemaster come from the Tatoeba website. Tatoeba is user-generated and occasionally, some Tatoeba users have generated sentences that are not solid French sentences. So we can still learn from them by these types of discussions. Your opinion is always welcome about the provided definition, pro or con.
I’m not sure what is wrong with my brain, but I find it deeply satisfying when someone corrects me or challenges me or gets into the nitty gritty of a sentence or a word. And I think it is a little push-back against AI-generated answers that I have found to be about 35 per cent useful or correct.
Whoa, that is a long as response to my dumb little comment haha.
Nothing wrong with posting the definition, it is just that, for me, the translation seems ok, and the definition seems to be match that, so I was not really sure what there was to discuss.
The only note I may add regarding the sentence, I think a distinction could be made between, “il n’y tiendra pas” and “il n’y rentrera pas”: I would maybe use the first one if the thing is too big for the container that I want it to fit it, and the second one if the object has a shape that makes it impossible to get it in.
Writing that made me realize that there is perhaps a distinction to be made between “fit in” and “get in” and how they translate, but i am getting to my limitations in english (argh, them pesky little english phrasal verbs :D). Is that what seemed unsual to you?
I think it was a fair comment that you made, and I thought it deserved an answer. Maybe I did overexplain a bit, so apologies for that!
When I look at a word like “rentrer“, I think it is entrer with an “r“. A lot of times, the R means “again“, such as rappeler means recall or call back. So then I think it is a movement verb with some sort of “again“ or “repeat“ meaning. “Fit“ doesn’t really mean moving from one place to another and there is no hint that there is some nuance of repeating. So it surprised me. So then I spent a little time looking it up and trying to figure out if it was the right word. We have a couple contributors on Tatoeba that are a little loosey-goosey with their word selections.
Thank you for the comments about the difference about fit in and get in and some alternative phrasing. Those nuances can be tricky.
I would say that the idea that the “r” (or “re”) at the beginning of a verb has to do with repeating an action is usually true. But as (almost) always, there are exceptions to the rules. This is kind of one of them. Rentrer can have the sense of coming (or going, depending on the point of view) back somewhere (usually home), but it can have the meaning of going inside something or, as per the definition that you originally posted, to have things fit into one another.