Italian word of the day
| Pronunciation | |
| English translation | He/she/it drinks |
| Origin | From the Italian verb bere, “to drink” |
Beve is one of the present tense conjugations of the verb bere, which means to drink. To be more precise, it’s the third-person present tense conjugation of bere, which is a very irregular verb in Italian and means “he/she drinks”.
Examples
| Martina beve un bicchiere di aranciata. | Martina drinks a glass of orange soda. |
| Il gatto beve dalla fontana del parco. | The cat drinks from the fountain in the park. |
| Quanto beve un essere umano ogni giorno? | How much does a man being drink every day? |
| Il mio cane non beve quasi mai. | My dog hardly ever drinks. |
Using beve in Italian
You probably already know that the indicativo presente (present tense) conjugation for the pronoun io adds the ending -o to the root of the verb, or stem (see note for more info).
What’s the stem of a verb?
Italian infinitive verbs end in -ARE, -ERE and -IRE.
Cut off this part and you are left with the root verb.
Examples:
tremare ➡️ trem-
piovere ➡️ piov-
cucire ➡️ cuc-
Italian verb endings for each tense are added to these root forms of the verb.
Now, how would you conjugate the present tense of bere, “to drink”?
Remove the infinitive ending -ere and add -o!
Bere… ➡️ B-… ➡️ Io bo?
You may be surprised to learn that the correct conjugation is actually io bevo.
This is because bere is an irregular verb. This is also why we will say beve in Italian, and never bo.
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