Eleggere: Full Conjugation

Eleggere (to elect, to choose) is the prefixed sibling of leggere, from Latin eligere — e- (out, from among) + legere (gather, choose, read). In Latin legere originally meant "to gather" before specializing into "to read," and "to elect" is literally "to gather out of a larger group, to pick from among." The morphology is identical to leggere: a regular -ere paradigm except the passato remoto (the -ssi pattern: elessi, elesse, elessero) and the participle (eletto — the -tto class).

In modern Italian eleggere is the verb of democratic process — parliaments, mayors, presidents of associations — and of older, weightier kinds of choosing: electing a domicile in legal documents, being chosen by God in theological discourse. The participle eletto has had a long career as a noun and adjective meaning "the chosen, the elect," sitting at the intersection of the political and the religious.

Indicativo presente

The same digraph behavior as leggere: the spelling gg never changes, but the sound flips between hard /ɡɡ/ before back vowels (o, a) and soft /ddʒ/ before front vowels (e, i). Stress falls on the second syllable in the singular and 3pl (e-lèg-go, e-lèg-gi, e-lèg-ge, e-lèg-go-no) and shifts to the ending in noi and voi (e-leg-già-mo, e-leg-gé-te).

In present-tense usage eleggere is overwhelmingly transitive: you elect someone, usually to a specific role. The role takes the preposition a or the conjunction come — eleggere qualcuno a/come presidente ("to elect someone president").

Imperfetto

All forms have soft /ddʒ/ because every imperfect ending begins with e. Fully regular morphology. The imperfect is the form for habitual past elections (annual votes, traditional procedures) and for descriptive backdrops in narrative.

Passato remoto

The classic -ssi pattern in 1-3-3 distribution, identical in shape to lessi / lesse / lessero. The 1sg, 3sg, and 3pl take the contracted eless- stem (notice that the gg digraph has collapsed to ss with no g remaining); the other three persons keep the regular elegg- stem with regular endings.

The pronunciation: elessi is /eˈlɛssi/ with no g sound at all — a clean /s/-/s/. This is the same morphological event you see in scrivere → scrissi and dirigere → diressi: the original Latin -gs- or -gg- cluster has reduced to -ss- in the irregular passato remoto, while the regular forms retain the modern Italian -gg-.

The passato remoto of eleggere belongs squarely to historical and political-historical writing: accounts of papal elections, parliamentary milestones, biographies of statesmen. Il conclave elesse Pio IX nel 1846 ("the conclave elected Pius IX in 1846") is the natural register.

Futuro semplice

Built on the predictable future stem elegger-. All forms have soft /ddʒ/ because the future endings all begin with e. The grave accent on eleggerò and eleggerà is mandatory.

Condizionale presente

Watch the orthographic distinction: eleggeremo (future, single m) versus eleggeremmo (conditional, double m). The same trap that catches every -ere conjugation.

Congiuntivo presente

Three singulars collapse into elegga. Watch the pronunciation pattern: elegga and eleggano (before a) are hard /ɡɡ/, while eleggiamo and eleggiate (before i) are soft /ddʒ/. Identical to legga / leggano / leggiamo / leggiate.

Congiuntivo imperfetto

Standard imperfect-subjunctive endings on the regular elegg- stem; all forms soft /ddʒ/. The voi form eleggeste is identical to the passato remoto eleggeste — context disambiguates entirely.

Imperativo

The imperative is rare in everyday speech because eleggere is fundamentally a collective, procedural action — you do not normally command a single person to elect someone. It does appear in formal calls to action: eleggete con cura i vostri rappresentanti ("elect your representatives carefully") in political appeals.

Forme non finite

The participle eletto is irregular in the same way as letto, scritto, fatto, detto — the -tto class. The expected regular elegguto simply does not exist; the language has used eletto since its earliest written records.

The Latin source is electus, the past participle of eligere, which gives us not only Italian eletto but also English elect, elected, election, elective, elite (originally a French derivative meaning "the chosen ones") and eclectic (literally "selecting from various sources"). The shared etymological field is unusually rich: when an English speaker says the chosen ones, the elect, the elite, the eligible, they are reaching into different layers of the same Latin verb that Italian collapses into a single word.

Compound tenses

Eleggere takes avere as its auxiliary in all standard transitive uses. The participle does not agree with the subject but agrees with a preceding direct-object pronoun.

In the second example, the participle eletta agrees with the feminine direct-object pronoun l' (= la), referring to a female mayor.

The passive: essere stato eletto

A particularly important construction is the passive — essere eletto (to be elected) — which is the standard way Italian reports election results. In this construction, the auxiliary is essere, and the participle agrees with the subject.

The double participle (è stato eletto) — passive of a transitive verb in a compound tense — is one of the constructions in Italian that most reliably triggers grammatical hesitation in learners. Both participles agree: Mattarella è stato eletto (masculine singular), le donne sono state elette (feminine plural).

The participle eletto as adjective and noun

The most pedagogically rich aspect of eleggere is the second life of its participle. Eletto functions as:

An adjective meaning "elected" or "chosen":

A noun meaning "the elected one" or, in religious contexts, "the chosen one" — with strong theological resonance in Christian tradition:

The doubly religious-political resonance of gli eletti ("the elect") is part of the Italian language's deep Catholic substrate: medieval and Renaissance theology used gli eletti to mean those predestined for salvation, and the modern political senses of eletto — "elected to office" — are descended directly from this religious original. When a contemporary Italian newspaper writes gli eletti del 25 settembre ("those elected on September 25"), the word still carries a faint glow of the older meaning.

Idiomatic and collocational uses

Beyond the literal "to elect," eleggere has a small set of formal and legal collocations:

• eleggere domicilio — legal/formal: to establish a domicile, to register an official address (a phrase that appears in every Italian rental contract and every legal proceeding)
• eleggere a propria patria — to elect, to adopt as one's home country (a literary or rhetorical phrase about emigration and belonging)
• eleggere a simbolo — to elect, to adopt as a symbol (literary)

Etymology and the e- prefix

Eleggere descends from Latin eligere, formed from e- / ex- (out, from among) + legere (gather, choose, read). The same root produced leggere (to read), collega ("co-chooser, companion in office"), diligente ("careful in choosing"), negligente ("not choosing"), and legge (law — what is "gathered" or "set forth"). The semantic web is consistent: legere is fundamentally about selection, which ramifies into reading, electing, gathering, and law.

In New Testament Greek the corresponding verb is eklegō (ἐκλέγω) — same prefix, same root — and Latin electus translates Greek eklektos. This gives the religious sense of eletto ("the chosen") that runs from the Vulgate Bible through Dante into modern Italian.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

1. Eleggere is exactly parallel to leggere: regular -ere paradigm except for the passato remoto (the -ssi pattern: elessi / elesse / elessero, with gg → ss) and the participle (eletto — the -tto class).

2. The pronunciation of the gg digraph follows the standard Italian rule: hard /ɡɡ/ before back vowels (o, a), soft /ddʒ/ before front vowels (e, i). The spelling never changes; only the sound does.

3. The auxiliary is avere in active uses (ho eletto) and essere in the passive (sono stato eletto). The passive è stato eletto is the standard form for reporting election results in Italian news.

4. The participle eletto has a rich life of its own as both an adjective (il presidente eletto) and a noun (gli eletti del Parlamento; gli eletti di Dio), with deep roots in both political and religious discourse.

5. Eleggere domicilio is the standard legal phrase for establishing a registered address — useful to recognize in rental contracts and official correspondence.

For the parent verb sharing all of eleggere's morphology, see leggere. The -ssi pattern that drives elessi / elesse / elessero is also the pattern of scrivere and the broader irregular double-consonant passato remoto class. The closely related verb correggere shares the same paradigm shape and a different prefix.