By Lingobi, Published on 06/06/2025
If you're learning Spanish, one verb you’ll use all the time is comer (to eat). Whether you're talking about what you ate for breakfast or what someone ate yesterday, it's important to know how to conjugate this verb in the past.
In Spanish, there are two main past tenses: the preterite and the imperfect. Let’s focus on the preterite, which is used for actions that are completed.
Here’s how you conjugate comer in the preterite tense:
yo comí – I ate
tú comiste – you ate
él/ella/usted comió – he/she/you (formal) ate
nosotros/nosotras comimos – we ate
vosotros/vosotras comisteis – you all ate (used in Spain)
ellos/ellas/ustedes comieron – they/you all ate
If you want to talk about what someone used to eat regularly, you’d use the imperfect tense instead:
yo comía – I used to eat
tú comías – you used to eat
él/ella/usted comía – he/she/you (formal) used to eat
nosotros/nosotras comíamos – we used to eat
vosotros/vosotras comíais – you all used to eat
ellos/ellas/ustedes comían – they/you all used to eat
Getting comfortable with these forms will make your conversations much more natural. Try using them to talk about what you ate yesterday or what you used to eat as a kid.
Want more practice with verbs and everyday vocabulary? Try the Sentence Builder game in Lingobi!
