Vocabulary / Italian
The 1,000 most common Italian words
These are the 1,000 words you will meet most often in Italian, in frequency order, each with its most common English meaning. A small core of words does most of the work in everyday speech, so learning them in this order gets you understanding real Italian faster than any themed list.
Fare tops the list and it is doing the work of a dozen English verbs: to do, to make, and half the idioms in the language: fare colazione, fare una foto, fare finta. The most frequent Italian verbs are frequent precisely because they stretch this far.
Italian drops subject pronouns, so verb endings carry who is acting. That is why the verbs near the top matter more than their single-line glosses suggest: each one is really six forms you will hear constantly.
Italian is generous to the eye: words sound as they are spelled, and thousands are near-cousins of English through Latin. The frequency order still matters: the everyday core is where the language stops looking like English and starts being Italian.
| # | Italian | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | fareˈfa.re | to do, make |
| 2 | essereˈɛs.se.re | to be |
| 3 | cosaˈkɔ.za | thing |
| 4 | andareanˈda.re | to go |
| 5 | comeˈko.me | how |
| 6 | direˈdi.re | say |
| 7 | tuttoˈtut.to | all, everything |
| 8 | saperesaˈpe.re | to know |
| 9 | beneˈbɛ.ne | well |
| 10 | questoˈkwes.to | this |
| 11 | quiˈkwi | here |
| 12 | perchéperˈke | why |
| 13 | soloˈso.lo | only |
| 14 | stareˈsta.re | to stay, be |
| 15 | avereaˈve.re | have |
| 16 | volerevoˈle.re | to want |
| 17 | vedereveˈde.re | see |
| 18 | pensarepenˈsa.re | think |
| 19 | cosìkoˈzi | like this |
| 20 | poterepoˈte.re | can |
| 21 | fattoˈfat.to | fact, deed |
| 22 | oraˈo.ra | hour, now |
| 23 | venireveˈni.re | come |
| 24 | quandoˈkwan.do | when |
| 25 | dettoˈdet.to | said, aforementioned |
| 26 | doveredoˈve.re | owed |
| 27 | prendereˈprɛn.de.re | take |
| 28 | parlareparˈla.re | speak |
| 29 | credereˈkre.de.re | believe |
| 30 | maiˈma.i | never, ever |
| 31 | sentiresenˈti.re | hear |
| 32 | moltoˈmol.to | very, much |
| 33 | ancheˈan.ke | also, too |
| 34 | statoˈsta.to | state |
| 35 | altroˈal.tro | other |
| 36 | piùˈpju | more |
| 37 | trovaretroˈva.re | find |
| 38 | primaˈpri.ma | before |
| 39 | veroˈve.ro | true |
| 40 | qualcosakwalˈkɔ.za | something |
| 41 | signoresiɲˈɲo.re | man |
| 42 | davverodavˈve.ro | really |
| 43 | dareˈda.re | given |
| 44 | ancoraanˈko.ra | still |
| 45 | casaˈka.sa | house |
| 46 | doveˈdo.ve | where |
| 47 | capirekaˈpi.re | understood |
| 48 | piacerepjaˈt͡ʃe.re | like |
| 49 | voltaˈvɔl.ta | time |
| 50 | amicoaˈmi.ko | friend |
| 51 | annoˈan.no | year |
| 52 | chiamarekjaˈma.re | call |
| 53 | lasciarelaʃˈʃa.re | leave |
| 54 | belloˈbɛl.lo | beautiful |
| 55 | aspettareas.petˈta.re | wait |
| 56 | guardareɡwarˈda.re | look |
| 57 | uomoˈwɔ.mo | man |
| 58 | tornaretorˈna.re | return |
| 59 | sempreˈsɛm.pre | always |
| 60 | cercaret͡ʃerˈka.re | searching |
| 61 | sembraresemˈbra.re | seem |
| 62 | tempoˈtɛm.po | time |
| 63 | vitaˈvi.ta | life |
| 64 | giornoˈd͡ʒor.no | day |
| 65 | mettereˈmet.te.re | put |
| 66 | buonoˈbwɔ.no | good |
| 67 | parteˈpar.te | part |
| 68 | ragazzoraˈɡat.t͡so | boy |
| 69 | chiedereˈkjɛ.de.re | ask |
| 70 | fuoriˈfwɔ.ri | outside |
| 71 | nuovoˈnwɔ.vo | new |
| 72 | uccidereutˈt͡ʃi.de.re | kill |
| 73 | personaperˈso.na | person |
| 74 | lavorolaˈvo.ro | work |
| 75 | conoscerekoˈnoʃ.ʃe.re | know |
| 76 | dopoˈdo.po | after |
| 77 | portareporˈta.re | carried |
| 78 | postoˈpos.to | place |
| 79 | tantoˈtan.to | much |
| 80 | padreˈpa.dre | father |
| 81 | bisognobiˈzoɲ.ɲo | need |
| 82 | stessoˈstes.so | same |
| 83 | aiutarea.juˈta.re | help |
| 84 | arrivarear.riˈva.re | arrived |
| 85 | viaˈvi.a | street |
| 86 | meglioˈmɛʎ.ʎo | better |
| 87 | modoˈmɔ.do | way |
| 88 | sicurosiˈku.ro | sure |
| 89 | giustoˈd͡ʒus.to | right |
| 90 | riuscireri.uʃˈʃi.re | succeed |
| 91 | dispiaceredis.pjaˈt͡ʃe.re | mind |
| 92 | succederesutˈt͡ʃɛ.de.re | happens |
| 93 | troppoˈtrɔp.po | too much |
| 94 | tenereteˈne.re | hold |
| 95 | figlioˈfiʎ.ʎo | son |
| 96 | problemaproˈblɛ.ma | problem |
| 97 | servireserˈvi.re | serves/helps |
| 98 | mortoˈmɔr.to | dead |
| 99 | donnaˈdɔn.na | woman |
| 100 | ragazzaraˈɡat.t͡sa | girl |
This page is the short version. The full list has 5,000 Italian words.
See all 5,000Sources and licences
The ranking is ours, built from the frequency data below and published under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Two things worth knowing before you read it. The list holds content words - nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs - so the function words that top any raw frequency count are not in it: no the, of, and, and no pronouns. And each entry gives one everyday meaning, written to be the one you are most likely to need, not the word's full range of senses.
To cite this resource: linguafolks. The most common Italian words. www.linguafolks.com/articles/most-common-words/it. Teachers and institutions are welcome to use, print or adapt the lists in coursework with attribution and a link.
- FrequencyWords, over OpenSubtitles 2018
Word frequency counted across film and television subtitles, via OPUS. Generator MIT (Hermit Dave); corpus OpenSubtitles 2018 via OPUS.
P. Lison, J. Tiedemann & M. Kouylekov (2018). OpenSubtitles2018: Statistical Rescoring of Sentence Alignments in Large Corpora. LREC 2018.
- Wiktionary
Pronunciation (IPA), where an entry has one - coverage is partial, and a word without one shows none. CC BY-SA and GFDL, dual-licensed.
Obtained in machine-readable form from kaikki.org. Tatu Ylonen (2022). Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data. LREC 2022, pp. 1317-1325.
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