Italian word of the day
Piove is a present tense conjugation of the verb piovere, which means to rain. To be more precise, it’s the third-person present tense conjugation of piovere, which translates as “it rains”.
Piove
It rains
Examples
Fuori piove. Non possiamo uscire a giocare.
It’s raining outside. We can’t go outside to play.
Ormai piove quasi tutti i giorni.
It rains almost every day now.
Piove dentro casa! Abbiamo un secchio?
It’s raining inside the house! Do we have a bucket?
How to use piove
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 piovere, “to rain”?
Take away the infinitive ending -are and add -o!
Piovere… ➡️ Piov-… ➡️ Io piovo?
Well, we can’t exactly say this is a very common verb conjugation, but… you are right!
That said, let’s see the present tense conjugation of piovere.
| io | piovo |
| tu | piovi |
| lui, lei | piove |
| noi | pioviamo |
| voi | piovete |
| loro | piovono |
It’s important to note that 9 times out of 10, you will be using either piove or piovono. You will almost never need to use the other present conjugations.
Let’s take a look at a few examples. You can say…
Sulla città piovono gocce di pioggia.
Rain drops are raining down on the city.
Piovono pesci dal cielo! Com’è possibile?
It’s raining fish from the sky! How is this possible?
More free Italian resources
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