International audience Approaches to the French conditionnel (henceforth COND) are generally monosemist (COND has one single meaning), often compositional (it is composed of two morphemes /R/ and /ɛ/) and implicitly non-conventional (the values interpreted in utterances are not stored in the linguistic knowledge of the speaker). The article suggests an alternative conception of COND-polysemic, non-compositional and conventional-which is based on the notion of construction developed by construction grammars (Goldberg 1995, 1996). According to this conception, COND corresponds to three constructions in French, with a temporal, modal or evidential meaning. This approach is further supported by diachronic data that notably show the double etymological origin of COND in Latin.