Bestille | Danish Grammar

Bestille is the verb you need in restaurants, online shops, and travel — it covers both ordering (food, goods, a taxi) and booking (a table, a ticket, an appointment). It also hides a delightful idiom: Hvad bestiller du? doesn't usually mean "what are you ordering?" — in casual speech it means "what are you up to?" This page sorts out the conjugation, the meanings, and how bestille differs from its close relatives reservere and købe.

Principal parts

Infinitive	Present	Past	Past participle	Imperative
(at) bestille	bestiller	bestilte	bestilt	bestil!

Bestille is a weak verb, but of the -te / -t type, not the -ede / -et type. That is the single most important thing to memorize about its conjugation: the past is bestilte, not bestillede, and the participle is bestilt, not bestillet. Verbs whose stem ends in a long consonant cluster or in -ll-, -nd-, -ng- typically take this shorter -te ending. There is a rough phonetic rhythm behind the split: stems ending in a "voiceless" consonant or a heavy cluster prefer the lighter -te, while stems ending in a vowel or a soft consonant take the fuller -ede. The rule has plenty of exceptions, so the only safe approach is to learn each verb's principal parts as a set — which is exactly why this page leads with the table.

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Still no subject agreement: jeg bestiller, vi bestiller, de bestiller. One present form for everyone. Danish never conjugates for person or number.

Ordering: food, goods, a taxi

The core meaning is to order — to request that something be supplied to you. This is what you do at a café, on a webshop, or when you call for a cab.

Jeg bestiller en kop kaffe og et stykke kage.

I'll order a cup of coffee and a piece of cake.

Vi bestilte en taxa, men den kom aldrig.

We ordered a taxi, but it never came.

Har du bestilt de nye sko på nettet?

Have you ordered the new shoes online?

Booking: tables, tickets, appointments

The same verb covers booking — reserving a place or a time in advance. A table at a restaurant, a hotel room, a doctor's appointment: you bestiller all of them.

Vi har bestilt bord til fire klokken otte.

We've booked a table for four at eight o'clock.

Jeg skal bestille en tid hos lægen.

I need to book an appointment at the doctor's.

The surprise idiom: Hvad bestiller du?

Taken literally, Hvad bestiller du? looks like "What are you ordering?" But in everyday Danish it is an extremely common casual greeting-question meaning "What are you up to? / What are you doing?" (informal). It catches every learner off guard.

— Hej! Hvad bestiller du for tiden?

— Hey! What are you up to these days?

Hvad bestiller I derinde? Der er helt stille.

What are you all doing in there? It's completely quiet.

In this idiomatic use, bestille means to busy oneself / to occupy oneself with. The logic, once you see it, is rather charming: if "ordering" is the business you are conducting, then "what are you ordering up?" slides naturally into "what are you busy with?" English has nothing that maps onto this directly, which is why the phrase feels so opaque the first time you hear it — there is no way to reach it by translating word for word. Treat Hvad bestiller du? as a fixed idiom and learn it whole. You will also meet the same sense in the phrase noget at bestille — something to do, something to keep you busy.

Jeg har ikke noget at bestille i weekenden.

I've got nothing to do this weekend.

Bestille vs. reservere vs. købe

Here is where learners blur three verbs together. Keep them apart like this:

Verb	Core meaning	Typical objects
bestille	order / book (request that it be supplied)	food, goods, a taxi, a table, a ticket
reservere	reserve / set aside (hold it for me)	a table, a room, a seat
købe	buy (pay and take ownership)	anything you pay for and keep

The cleanest contrast: when you bestiller a pizza, you are asking them to make and supply it; when you køber a pizza, the focus is on paying for it; when you reserverer a table, you are asking them to hold it aside for you. For a restaurant table, bestille bord and reservere bord both work and mean essentially the same thing — see the dedicated note on reservere.

Jeg bestilte maden, men jeg har endnu ikke betalt for den.

I ordered the food, but I haven't paid for it yet.

Useful collocations

Danish	English
bestille mad	to order food
bestille bord	to book a table
bestille en taxa / en tid	to order a taxi / book an appointment
have noget at bestille	to have something to do, to be busy
en bestilling	an order (the noun)

A short dialogue

— Skal vi bestille bord til i aften?

— Shall we book a table for tonight?

— Ja, gør det. Og så kan vi bestille pizzaen på forhånd, så slipper vi for at vente.

— Yes, do that. And then we can order the pizza in advance, so we don't have to wait.

Common mistakes

❌ Jeg vil gerne bestillede en kaffe.

Incorrect — after vil you need the infinitive bestille, and the past tense anyway is bestilte, not bestillede.

✅ Jeg vil gerne bestille en kaffe.

I'd like to order a coffee.

❌ Vi bestillede et bord i går.

Incorrect — bestille follows the -te pattern: the past is bestilte.

✅ Vi bestilte et bord i går.

We booked a table yesterday.

❌ Jeg har bestillet en taxa.

Incorrect — the participle is bestilt, not bestillet.

✅ Jeg har bestilt en taxa.

I've ordered a taxi.

❌ Jeg bestilte en ny computer i butikken og tog den med hjem.

Misleading — if you paid and took it home, that's købe (buy), not bestille (order).

✅ Jeg købte en ny computer i butikken og tog den med hjem.

I bought a new computer in the shop and took it home.

Key takeaways

Bestille is a weak -te verb: bestille / bestiller / bestilte / bestilt. Don't say bestillede.
It means both order (food, goods, taxi) and book (table, appointment, ticket).
Hvad bestiller du? is idiomatic for "what are you up to?" (informal).
Keep bestille (order/book), reservere (set aside), and købe (buy) distinct.

For more restaurant and shopping language, see the shopping expressions page.

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