Conjugating the Spanish Verb Comer (to Eat)

Spanish verbs fall into different groups, and each group is conjugated a little differently. If you’re going to master Spanish verbs like comer, you need to be able to identify which group a verb belongs to: regular (follows regular conjugation rules for -ar, -er, and -ir verbs), stem-changing (morphs depending on how you use it in a sentence), spelling-changing (has consonant-spelling changes in some forms to follow pronunciation rules), or reflexive (reflects the action back on the subject of the sentence).

Comer (kohm-ehr) (to eat) is a regular -er verb, so its conjugation is pretty straightforward. Here it is in the present tense:

The following examples show you comer in action:

• ¿Come usted tres veces al día? (Do you eat three times a day?)

• Sí. Como tres veces al día todos los días. (Yes. I eat three times a day every day.)

Need to know how to conjugate comer in another tense? The following tables show you its preterit, imperfect, and future forms.

You use the preterit tense like this:

• ¿Comiste pizza esta tarde? (Did you eat pizza this afternoon?)

• Sí. Comí pizza y estaba muy buena. (Yes. I ate pizza and it was very good.)

Here are some examples of the imperfect tense:

• ¿Comían ustedes queso todos los días? (Did you used to eat cheese every day?)

• No. Comíamos queso solo tres veces por semana. (No. We used to eat cheese only three times a week.)

The following samples put the future tense to work:

• ¿Comerás pizza con tus amigos este fin de semana? (Will you eat pizza with your friends this weekend?)

• Sí. Comeremos mucha pizza este fin de semana. (Yes. We will eat a lot of pizza this weekend.)