Vincere: Full Conjugation

Vincere (to win) is the verb of triumph, victory, and overcoming. You win a match, win the lottery, win an argument, win someone's heart — and at the structural level, vincere belongs to the same group of -ere verbs as prendere, scrivere, and leggere: regular almost everywhere, with a single shape-shift in the passato remoto (vinsi) and a matching irregular past participle (vinto). Once you internalise these two forms, the entire paradigm slots into place.

What makes vincere worth learning carefully is that its irregular forms travel in a tight family of related verbs — convincere (to convince), avvincere (to captivate), stravincere (to win convincingly) — and they share the same -nsi/-nto pattern that you will see again in spegnere → spensi/spento, piangere → piansi/pianto, and giungere → giunsi/giunto. Mastering vincere unlocks an entire micro-paradigm of -ere verbs whose stems end in -nc- or -ng-.

Indicativo presente

The spelling c stays put across all six forms, but the sound flips between hard /k/ (before o) and soft /tʃ/ (before e or i). This is the same automatic Italian spelling rule that governs cercare → cerco/cerchi and gioco → giochi — only here the verb keeps a constant spelling because each conjugational ending happens to provide exactly the right environment.

In vinciamo, the i is purely orthographic — it tells you the c is soft, but you don't pronounce a separate i vowel. The form is three syllables (vin-cià-mo), with the stress on the second.

The stem vowel i in vinco is short and closed /i/, vìnco, /ˈvinko/ — and the stress falls on the first syllable across the singular forms (vìnco, vìnci, vìnce, vìncono) and shifts to the ending in the 1pl and 2pl (vinciàmo, vincéte).

Imperfetto

Fully regular. All forms have soft /tʃ/ because every imperfect ending begins with e. This is the tense for habitual winning ("we used to win every Sunday") and for setting the scene of an in-progress contest.

Passato remoto

This is the canonical -si pattern with the -nc- → -ns- shift. The 1sg, 3sg, and 3pl forms drop the c of the stem and replace it with s: vins-. The other three persons (tu, noi, voi) keep the regular vinc- stem with regular endings.

The 1-3-3 alternation is the standard shape of irregular -ere verbs in the passato remoto. Notice the pronunciation: vinsi is /ˈvinsi/ — the n and s are pronounced separately, no /tʃ/ here. The stress falls on the first syllable: vìn-si, vìn-se, vìn-se-ro.

The Italian vinsi/vinse/vinsero belong to the broad sigmatic-perfect class — verbs whose passato remoto strong stem ends in -s-. Many of these go back to a Latin perfect in -xi (= /ks/), as in dico → dissi (Lat. dixi) or scrivo → scrissi (Lat. scripsi). For vincere, the Italian form aligns the strong stem with the present-tense nasal, producing vins-.

The passato remoto of vincere is essential for reading sports journalism, history, biography, and any narrative writing about Italian unification, the World Wars, or athletic legends.

Futuro semplice

Regular. The thematic vowel is preserved (vincere → vincer-ò) — there is no contraction. All forms have soft /tʃ/ because the future endings all start with e. Note the obligatory grave accent on -ò: vincerò, never vincero.

Condizionale presente

The conditional is regular. Watch the double m in vinceremmo — single-m vinceremo is the future ("we will win"), double-m vinceremmo is the conditional ("we would win"). This is the universal -ere conditional trap.

Congiuntivo presente

The three singular forms collapse into vinca. Watch the spelling: vinca and vincano (before a) are hard /k/, while vinciamo and vinciate (before i) are soft /tʃ/ — the same digraph rule that runs through the present indicative.

Congiuntivo imperfetto

Regular. The voi form vinceste is identical to the passato remoto voi form — only context tells them apart. This tense drives counterfactual se-clauses about winning.

Imperativo

The imperative is most often heard in encouragement and pep talks: vinci tu (you can win it), vinci la paura (conquer your fear). The negative tu form uses the infinitive: non vincere a tutti i costi (don't win at any cost).

Forme non finite

The participle vinto is the second irregularity (after vinsi). Same shape-shift: the -c- of the stem is replaced by -t-. This is the -nto ending, a productive class in Italian that also covers spento, pianto, giunto, vinto, dipinto, finto (from fingere), unto, punto, tinto. All -ere verbs whose stems end in -nc- or -ng- tend to land in this class.

The participle is also a standard Italian noun (il vinto, "the loser, the defeated one") and adjective (vinto "defeated, beaten"). The contrast with il vincitore ("the winner, the victor") gives Italian a clean lexical pair: il vincitore e il vinto.

Compound tenses

Vincere takes avere as its auxiliary in every compound tense. The participle does not agree with the subject but agrees with a preceding direct-object pronoun.

In the second example, vinta agrees with the preceding pronoun l' (the elided la, feminine singular).

Etymology

From Latin vincĕre "to conquer, defeat, prevail" — the same root that gave English invincible, convince, evince, victor. The Latin perfect vīcī (Caesar's veni, vidi, vici) is the historical ancestor of vinsi, but the modern Italian form has been reshaped: the nasal -n- of the present stem (vinc-) has been restored into the strong forms, aligning vincere with the productive sigmatic class (scrivere → scrissi, piangere → piansi, spegnere → spensi). The participle vinto likewise shows the restored nasal (rather than the -tt- you would expect from a direct development of Latin victum). The whole micro-paradigm of -c-/-ns-/-nt- makes vincere a textbook example of analogical levelling in the history of Italian.

The compound family

Verbs derived from vincere with a prefix all conjugate identically. The most important is convincere, an A1-level verb that you will use constantly.

The participle convinto also functions as an adjective meaning "convinced, certain": sono convinto che... ("I'm convinced that..."). And convinto paired with non (non sono convinto) is the Italian way of expressing polite skepticism.

Idioms and collocations

Vincere is at the heart of many fixed expressions, especially in sports, gambling, and rhetoric. The most important to internalise:

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

Vincere is regular everywhere except in the passato remoto (vinsi/vinse/vinsero — the -si pattern with the -nc- → -ns- shift) and the past participle (vinto — the -nto pattern). The orthographic c alternates automatically between hard /k/ (before o, a) and soft /tʃ/ (before e, i) — that's a regular Italian spelling rule, not a verb irregularity.

Internalise this verb together with its prefixed family — convincere, avvincere, stravincere, rivincere — and you have absorbed several A1/A2-level verbs at once. The contrast with perdere makes a natural drilling pair: both verbs cover the basic semantic axis of competition, and both belong to the same -si passato remoto family.

For the broader -si/-so and -si/-nto class, see irregular passato remoto with -si pattern. Memorise vinsi → vinto as a unit and the rest of the verb family follows for free.