Avere Conjugation: All Tenses, Explained Simply (with Examples)
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Avere is the other great Italian workhorse. If essere is “to be”, avere is “to have”, and you'll reach for it constantly, partly for talking about what you own, but mostly as the engine behind the passato prossimo, the tense you'll use every time you describe something that happened this morning, last week or ten years ago. Its forms look almost suspiciously simple once you get past one quirk: ho, hai, ha and hanno all carry a written h that nobody ever pronounces. Get that spelling wrong and you've accidentally written a completely different word.
Don't worry. By the end of this guide you'll have every tense of avere laid out in clean tables, with example sentences for each, plus the set of idioms that trips up almost every English speaker learning Italian. But first, the hack that saves you weeks of work.
The Avere Conjugation Hack: Learn These First
Here's the honest truth about conjugation tables: you do not need to memorise every tense before you can use avere in real conversation. Native-sounding beginners lean on a tiny handful of forms.
If you learn nothing else today, learn the presente of avere by heart:
- ho (“I have”), hai (“you have”), ha (“he/she/it has”), abbiamo (“we have”), avete (“you all have”), hanno (“they have”)
Notice that written h sitting silently at the front of four of those six forms. You never pronounce it, Italians never pronounce it, but it has to be there on the page: drop it from ho and you've written o, “or”; drop it from ha and you've written a, “to/at”; drop it from hanno and you've written anno, “year”. The h does no phonetic work at all. It sits there purely to stop avere colliding with four completely unrelated words.
That single row of six words will carry you through talking about what you own, your age, your family, and a string of everyday feelings (more on that below). Add the pattern avere + past participle, which builds the passato prossimo, and you can start narrating almost anything you did today. Everything below that is for rounding out your Italian over time, not for blocking you now.
Right, now let's build the full picture.
Avere at a Glance
| Infinito | avere |
| Gerundio (-ing) | avendo |
| Participio passato | avuto |
| Verb type | irregular |
| English meaning | “to have” |
A quick note on the pronouns I'll use in every table:
| Italian | English |
|---|---|
| io | I |
| tu | you (informal singular) |
| lui / lei | he / she |
| noi | we |
| voi | you all |
| loro | they |
Avere Conjugation: Indicativo Mood (Simple Tenses)
The indicativo is the everyday, “stating facts” mood, and these five simple tenses are the backbone of avere. Here they all are in one place:
| Pronoun | Presente | Imperfetto | Passato Remoto | Futuro Semplice | Condizionale Presente |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| io | ho | avevo | ebbi | avrò | avrei |
| tu | hai | avevi | avesti | avrai | avresti |
| lui/lei | ha | aveva | ebbe | avrà | avrebbe |
| noi | abbiamo | avevamo | avemmo | avremo | avremmo |
| voi | avete | avevate | aveste | avrete | avreste |
| loro | hanno | avevano | ebbero | avranno | avrebbero |
And here's each one in action:
- Presente – Ho due fratelli. – “I have two brothers.”
- Imperfetto (a past description or ongoing state) – Da bambino avevo un cane. – “As a child I had a dog.”
- Passato Remoto (a finished past event, mostly used in writing and storytelling) – Ebbe un'idea geniale. – “He had a brilliant idea.”
- Futuro Semplice – Domani avrai più tempo. – “Tomorrow you'll have more time.”
- Condizionale Presente – Avrei bisogno di un consiglio. – “I would need some advice.”
A quick honest note on the passato remoto: in most of Italy today it lives in novels and history books rather than in conversation, where the passato prossimo (below) does the job instead. Worth recognising, not urgent to actively produce.
Avere Conjugation: Indicativo Mood (Compound Tenses)
Good news here: the compound tenses are the easy part. Every one of them is simply avere (conjugated) plus its own past participle, avuto. There's a nice twist too, avere is used to build its own compound tenses. Learn this pattern once and it covers hundreds of other Italian verbs, since avere is by far the most common auxiliary in the language.
| Pronoun | Passato Prossimo | Trapassato Prossimo | Futuro Anteriore | Condizionale Passato |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| io | ho avuto | avevo avuto | avrò avuto | avrei avuto |
| tu | hai avuto | avevi avuto | avrai avuto | avresti avuto |
| lui/lei | ha avuto | aveva avuto | avrà avuto | avrebbe avuto |
| noi | abbiamo avuto | avevamo avuto | avremo avuto | avremmo avuto |
| voi | avete avuto | avevate avuto | avrete avuto | avreste avuto |
| loro | hanno avuto | avevano avuto | avranno avuto | avrebbero avuto |
- Passato Prossimo – Ho avuto una giornata pesante. – “I've had a heavy day.”
- Trapassato Prossimo – Prima di quel viaggio, non avevo mai avuto paura di volare. – “Before that trip, I had never been afraid of flying.”
- Futuro Anteriore – Quando arriverai, avrò già avuto notizie. – “By the time you arrive, I'll already have had news.”
- Condizionale Passato – Avrei avuto più successo con più pratica. – “I would have had more success with more practice.”
(There's also the trapassato remoto, ebbi avuto, but like its rarer cousins in other Romance languages it's confined to formal literature. Safe to file under recognise-don't-produce.)
Avere Conjugation: Congiuntivo Mood (Subjunctive)
The congiuntivo is Italian's mood for doubt, opinion, wish and anything that isn't stated as a plain fact, it turns up constantly after credo che, penso che and spero che. With avere you mainly need two forms day to day.
| Pronoun | Congiuntivo Presente | Congiuntivo Imperfetto |
|---|---|---|
| io | abbia | avessi |
| tu | abbia | avessi |
| lui/lei | abbia | avesse |
| noi | abbiamo | avessimo |
| voi | abbiate | aveste |
| loro | abbiano | avessero |
Notice the present subjunctive gives io, tu and lui/lei the exact same word, abbia. That's completely normal, Italians lean on the pronoun (or context) to tell them apart, it isn't a typo.
- Congiuntivo Presente – Penso che lei abbia ragione. – “I think she's right.”
- Congiuntivo Imperfetto – Se avessi più tempo, viaggerei di più. – “If I had more time, I would travel more.”
The subjunctive also has compound forms, built the same way as before: abbia avuto (congiuntivo passato) and avessi avuto (congiuntivo trapassato). Not common enough to need their own table, just bolt avuto onto the pattern above.
Avere Conjugation: Imperativo Mood (Commands)
Telling someone to “have” patience, courage or a good time uses the imperativo. Because nobody naturally shouts “have!” the way you'd shout “be!”, Italian borrows the subjunctive forms for most persons here, only noi keeps a shape that matches the presente.
| Pronoun | Affirmative |
|---|---|
| tu | abbi |
| Lei | abbia |
| noi | abbiamo |
| voi | abbiate |
| loro | abbiano |
- Abbi pazienza! – “Have patience!”
- Abbiate cura di voi. – “Take care of yourselves.”
When to Use Avere
Avere covers two huge jobs in Italian, and only one of them has anything to do with owning things.
Literal possession. The straightforward use: Ho una macchina nuova. – “I have a new car.”
The dominant auxiliary. Most Italian verbs build their compound tenses, passato prossimo, trapassato prossimo and the rest, with avere, not essere. Ho mangiato (“I have eaten”), Ho visto un film (“I saw a film”), Hai capito? (“Did you understand?”). Essere only takes over for a specific, learnable list of mostly motion and reflexive verbs, that's a subject for its own guide. When you're not sure which auxiliary a verb wants, avere is the safer first guess.
The idioms. This is genuinely the single most useful thing on this page. Italian uses avere for a whole set of states that English describes with “to be”, and getting these backwards is the most common giveaway of a learner:
- avere fame – to be hungry – Ho fame, mangiamo? – “I'm hungry, shall we eat?”
- avere sete – to be thirsty
- avere sonno – to be sleepy
- avere caldo / avere freddo – to be hot / to be cold
- avere … anni – to be … years old – Ho trentacinque anni. – “I'm thirty-five.”
- avere ragione / avere torto – to be right / to be wrong
- avere paura – to be afraid – Non avere paura. – “Don't be afraid.”
English speakers instinctively reach for essere here, because English says “to be”. Say sono fame and Italians will understand you, but it'll sound off. The correct, idiomatic Italian is always avere.
Why Is Avere So Irregular?
Avere comes from the Latin habere, “to have” or “to hold”, and its two main irregularities both have tidy explanations.
- The silent written h. Ho, hai, ha and hanno keep a purely orthographic h that Latin's habere handed down, kept alive in spelling for one job only: telling avere apart from its homophones o (“or”), ai (“to the”), a (“to/at”) and anno (“year”). No modern Italian speaker pronounces it, but drop it in writing and you've written a different word.
- The contracted future/conditional stem. A regular -ere verb would build its future as averò, so Italian squeezes out that middle vowel to give avrò, avrai, avrà and so on. The same contraction happens in andare (andrò, not anderò) and a handful of other common verbs, once you spot the pattern in avere you'll start recognising it everywhere.
Common Mistakes with Avere
A few traps that catch nearly everyone:
- Dropping the h. Ho, hai, ha and hanno need their silent h in writing, without it you've typed o, ai, a and anno, four different words.
- Ha vs a. Lei ha un gatto (“she has a cat”) versus Vado a Roma (“I'm going to Rome”). Same sound, opposite job.
- Hanno vs anno. Hanno is “they have”; anno is “year”. Easy to mix up when you're typing fast, and spellcheck won't catch it since both are real words.
- Using essere in the idioms. Sono fame, sono caldo and similar slips are the classic tell of an English-speaking learner. It's always avere fame, avere caldo.
Avere Conjugation FAQ
Is avere regular or irregular? Irregular, though its irregularity is fairly mild compared to a verb like essere. The main quirks are the silent h in the presente and the contracted stem avr- used for the future and conditional.
What are the six present-tense forms of avere? Ho, hai, ha, abbiamo, avete, hanno, which is “I have, you have, he/she has, we have, you all have, they have.”
How do you conjugate avere in the past? Italian has two everyday past tenses. The passato prossimo (for narrating specific completed events) is ho avuto, hai avuto, ha avuto, abbiamo avuto, avete avuto, hanno avuto. The imperfetto (for descriptions and ongoing past states) is avevo, avevi, aveva, avevamo, avevate, avevano.
When do Italian verbs use avere instead of essere as the auxiliary? Most verbs use avere by default. Essere is reserved for a specific set of mostly motion and reflexive verbs (andare, venire, tornare and the reflexives, among others). If in doubt, avere is the more likely choice.
What are the essential avere idioms? Avere fame (hungry), avere sete (thirsty), avere sonno (sleepy), avere caldo/freddo (hot/cold), avere … anni (… years old), avere ragione/torto (right/wrong), and avere paura (afraid). English uses “to be” for every one of these, Italian always uses avere.
Ora Hai Tutto Quello che Ti Serve
Ora hai tutto quello che ti serve means “now you have everything you need”, and using hai to say it feels like the right way to close things out. You've got every tense of avere in front of you, an example for each, the two jobs it does (possession and auxiliary), and the idiom set that quietly separates confident Italian speakers from everyone still translating “I am hungry” word for word.
The fastest way to lock these in is to use them. Build a few of these forms into flashcards (we love Anki for exactly this), then start dropping ho, hai and ha into real sentences out loud. While you're at it, pair this with our guide to useful Italian words and our quick guide to saying thank you in Italian to round out your everyday basics. If you'd like to hear avere used naturally by native speakers, ItalianPod101 is a great listening resource.
But the tables were only ever the warm-up. The whole point of learning ho, hai and ha is to walk up to a real person and say something true, your age, your plans, how hungry you are, which is exactly what we get you doing from day one inside the Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp. So go and have a go in Italian. Abbi pazienza con te stesso, e comincia.
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