Nevicare: Impersonal Conjugation

Nevicare (to snow) is the cleanest impersonal weather verb in Italian: a regular first-conjugation -are verb that exists almost exclusively in the third-person singular, with no morphological irregularities to memorize. The single fact you must know is the h-insertion rule (nevicherà, nevicherebbe, nevichi) — the standard Italian spelling rule that preserves the hard /k/ sound of c before a front vowel.

The cultural footprint of nevicare is smaller than that of piovere — Italy is, on the whole, a country of rain rather than snow — but it is far from negligible. Snow figures prominently in Italian literature (Pascoli's Nevicata), in folklore (the Befana arriving on snowy mountain roads), and in the agricultural proverbs that shaped the Italian rural calendar for centuries.

Indicativo presente

The dashes are honest: in its weather meaning, nevicare simply has no first or second person. There is no nevico, nevichi, nevichiamo in normal conversation. The pronunciation places the stress on the antepenultimate (nè-vi-ca) — a pattern Italian shares with many three-syllable verbs of weather and natural phenomena (tuona, lampeggia, gela). Note that the c is hard /k/ throughout the present indicative because the endings here are -a and -o (in the unused forms) — both back vowels.

Imperfetto

The imperfect is the standard form for descriptive backdrop — falling snow is almost always atmosphere rather than event. Nevicava da ore quando siamo arrivati al rifugio ("it had been snowing for hours when we got to the mountain hut"). The c is hard /k/, since the ending begins with a.

Passato remoto

Fully regular -are passato remoto with the obligatory grave accent on the final-stressed -ò. Used in literary or historical contexts (nel febbraio del 1956 nevicò perfino a Palermo — "in February 1956 it even snowed in Palermo," referencing one of the most famous weather events of twentieth-century Italy). In speech you would always use the passato prossimo instead.

Futuro semplice

This is where the h-insertion finally bites. The future ending begins with e, which would soften a bare c to /tʃ/. To preserve the hard /k/ of the verb stem, Italian inserts an h: nevicherà /ne-vi-ke-ˈra/, not nevicerà (which would be pronounced /ne-vi-tʃe-ˈra/, an entirely different non-form). The grave accent on the final -à is mandatory.

You will hear nevicherà on every Italian weather forecast in winter. Domani nevicherà sopra i mille metri ("tomorrow it will snow above a thousand metres") is the standard meteorological register.

Condizionale presente

Same h-insertion logic as the future, for the same reason — the conditional ending -erebbe begins with e. Used in hypotheticals (nevicherebbe se la temperatura scendesse di un altro grado) and in indirect-speech contexts (ha detto che nevicherebbe per tutto il weekend).

Congiuntivo presente

The congiuntivo presente of an -are verb takes the ending -i for the singular persons — and once again the h is required to keep the c hard. The form is nevichi /ne-ˈviki/, and the misspelling nevici would have to be pronounced /ne-ˈvitʃi/, which is not the verb.

This is the form to use after spero che, credo che, è strano che, bisogna che, è bene che — the standard subjunctive triggers.

Congiuntivo imperfetto

Regular -asse ending; the c is hard /k/ because the ending begins with a, so no h is needed. Used in counterfactual conditionals (se nevicasse stanotte, domani non potrei andare al lavoro) and in past-tense subjunctive complements (non sapevamo che nevicasse così a sud).

Forme non finite

All forms are fully regular. The c is hard /k/ in every non-finite form because each ending begins with a back vowel (a, o) — the h-insertion is unnecessary here. The participle nevicato is invariable in the impersonal usage (ha nevicato, è nevicato); in the rare figurative usages it can agree, but that construction is mostly literary.

The gerund nevicando is useful in subordinate clauses providing meteorological context: nevicando ininterrottamente da due giorni, il paese era ormai isolato ("with the snow having fallen non-stop for two days, the village was by now cut off").

The auxiliary problem — essere or avere?

Nevicare shares the auxiliary flexibility of piovere: both essere and avere are accepted, with the same regional and register-based pattern.

The two are genuinely interchangeable, and the choice tracks regional and stylistic preference rather than any meaning difference:

The Accademia della Crusca treats both as fully correct. As with piovere, the practical advice for learners is: pick one and be consistent within a single text. Italian newspapers, weather services, and broadcasters mostly use essere today, but radio reports from Naples or Bari will quite naturally say ha nevicato, and no one finds it strange.

When nevicare takes a real subject

As with piovere, the impersonal mold loosens when the subject is something other than snow. In figurative or poetic usage, things rain or snow down: confetti at a parade, ash from a volcano, petals from cherry trees in spring. In this construction the verb fully conjugates, almost always takes essere, and the participle agrees with the subject.

These uses are literary and not part of everyday speech, but they are perfectly grammatical and worth recognizing.

Idiomatic and proverbial uses

The idiomatic range of nevicare is narrower than that of piovere — Italian's wet weather is simply more central to its imaginative life than its snowy weather — but the verb has its own corner of the language.

• nevicare forte / a fiocchi grossi — to snow heavily / in big flakes
• nevicare di brutto (informal/colloquial) — to be snowing hard
• nevicare in faccia — figurative: to be confronted suddenly with something cold or unwelcome
• avere i capelli che nevicano — poetic: to have hair that is going white (literally "hair that is snowing")

The most famous proverb featuring nevicare is the agricultural rhyme:

Sotto la neve, pane; sotto la pioggia, fame.

Under the snow, bread; under the rain, hunger.

This is the wisdom of generations of Italian peasants: a snowy winter insulates the earth, kills pests, and produces a good wheat harvest in the spring; a rainy winter rots the soil and brings agricultural disaster. Modern climate science has largely confirmed the rhyme — winter snowpack is a far better moisture-management strategy for cereal agriculture than equivalent rainfall.

A second proverb, regional but well known: La neve di marzo non dura un'ora ("March snow doesn't last an hour"), evoking the brevity of late-winter snowfalls.

Cultural and literary context

Italian poetry has its canonical snow poem: Giovanni Pascoli's Nevicata (1904), opening with "Lenta la neve fiocca, fiocca, fiocca" ("Slowly the snow falls, falls, falls in flakes") — a triple repetition that mimics the snowflakes' rhythm. The verb fioccare (to fall in flakes) is a literary quasi-synonym of nevicare.

The Befana, the old witch who delivers gifts on the night of January 5–6 (Epiphany), is traditionally depicted arriving through snowy mountain skies. Children's rhymes about her almost always feature snow.

In the alpine regions nevica is heard several times a winter; in Sicily, Sardinia, and Puglia it is exotic enough that snowfall makes the news. The north-south asymmetry is reflected in vocabulary: northern dialects have rich snow vocabulary (nevazza, neviera, nevischio), southern dialects very little.

Etymology

Nevicare derives from a Vulgar Latin frequentative nivicare (literally "to snow repeatedly"), built on the Latin noun nix, nivis (snow). The frequentative suffix -icare originally implied repeated or distributed action — fitting for snowfall, which is by nature a long, gentle, distributed event rather than a single decisive moment. The same root produced French neiger, Spanish nevar, Portuguese nevar, and Catalan nevar. The Italian noun is la neve /ˈneve/ (snow), feminine, with the diminutive nevicata ("a snowfall," meaning a single instance of snowing — as in Pascoli's poem title).

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

1. Nevicare is impersonal in its weather meaning: only the third-person singular forms exist in everyday use. There is no nevico, nevichi, nevichiamo in the meteorological sense.

2. The verb is fully regular — no irregular passato remoto (nevicò), no irregular participle (nevicato). The only morphological complication is the standard h-insertion: nevicherà, nevicherebbe, nevichi, where the h preserves the hard /k/ before e or i.

3. Both essere and avere are accepted as auxiliary, exactly as with piovere. È nevicato (preferred in northern Italy and standardized writing) and ha nevicato (preferred in central-southern speech and older usage) are both correct.

4. Figurative usage breaks the impersonal mold: when something other than snow is the subject — petals, ash, confetti — the verb fully conjugates and almost always takes essere with agreement. This is a literary register, not everyday speech.

5. Cultural context matters: snowfall is dramatic in Italy outside the Alps. The proverb Sotto la neve, pane; sotto la pioggia, fame and Pascoli's Nevicata are good entry points to the verb's place in Italian literary and rural imagination.

For Italy's other major weather verb, see piovere. For the broader auxiliary question that nevicare and piovere both raise, see auxiliary choice. The h-insertion rule of nevicherà / nevichi is part of the wider Italian spelling system documented at spelling and pronunciation fundamentals.