Volere: Meanings Across Tenses

Volere translates as "to want," but that English label hides almost everything that makes the verb interesting. Italian uses volere to express pure desire — and because Italian has no separate "will" modal (unlike English, which uses will/would for both desire and futurity), every shade of wanting, wishing, intending, and insisting is loaded onto this one verb. Each tense unlocks a different meaning, and the gap between voglio, vorrei, and avrei voluto is the gap between a demand, a polite request, and a regret.

This page walks through volere tense by tense, with attention to two points English speakers consistently miss: the polite imperfetto di cortesia (volevo), and the way the passato prossimo turns "wanted" into "insisted" — sometimes with the auxiliary changing along the way.

Presente: voglio = I want (right now, plain and direct)

The presente of volere expresses a current desire. It is direct, unhedged, and — exactly as in English with bare "I want" — slightly blunt in social situations.

Imperfetto: volevo = I wanted (background, or polite "I'd like")

The imperfetto volevo has two distinct uses.

The first is the standard imperfetto background meaning: a desire that existed in the past, framed as ongoing or unresolved.

The second use — the imperfetto di cortesia — is uniquely Italian and catches every English speaker off guard. To soften a current request, Italians shift the verb into the imperfetto, even though the wanting is happening right now. It works exactly like the English politeness shift "I was wondering if..." — temporal distance creates social distance.

The speaker is not reporting a past desire — they are making the request right now, with volevo chosen as a politeness marker. This is the everyday workhorse register at a counter, in an email, on the phone.

Condizionale: vorrei = I would like (polite, hypothetical)

Vorrei is the standard polite form of "I want." Use it whenever you would say "I'd like" in English — at the bar, in a shop, in any service interaction, in writing to someone you don't know well.

Vorrei also expresses hypothetical wanting — desires that aren't realistic or possible.

Passato prossimo: ho voluto = I wanted (and did) — i.e., I insisted

The passato prossimo of volere does NOT mean "I wanted [but didn't necessarily do it]." It means "I wanted [and went through with it]" — i.e., I insisted. This is the single most counter-intuitive point about Italian modal verbs for English speakers.

If you want to express "I wanted to but didn't," you reach for the imperfetto instead — exactly because the imperfetto leaves the desire unresolved.

This perfective/imperfective contrast is the same logic that runs through potere (ho potuto = managed to; potevo = could have, was able to) and dovere (ho dovuto = had to and did; dovevo = was supposed to). Volere fits the same pattern: the perfective "completes" the wanting into action.

Auxiliary selection in compound tenses

Volere takes avere as its own auxiliary — but in compound tenses with an infinitive, it can switch to essere to match the auxiliary that the infinitive itself would take.

In careful modern usage, the essere option is preferred when the following infinitive selects essere, with the past participle of volere agreeing in gender and number. In informal speech, avere is widely tolerated for both. See modal verbs and auxiliary choice for the full treatment.

Condizionale passato: avrei voluto = I would have liked (counterfactual)

The condizionale passato expresses a past desire that did NOT come true — the regret form of volere. It is purely counterfactual: the wanting existed, but reality went the other way.

The same auxiliary-switching logic applies: with an infinitive that takes essere, you can write sarei voluto andare ("I would have liked to go").

Futuro: vorrò = I will want (rare, and never a future-intention marker)

The futuro of volere — vorrò, vorrai, vorrà, vorremo, vorrete, vorranno — exists, but it is rare. It expresses a desire that will arise in the future, and the only common contexts are speculative ("you'll want to know this") and conditional sentences.

The critical point for English speakers: vorrei does not mean "I will want," and Italian has no equivalent of the English future "I will" built from volere. Where English uses will as a pure future auxiliary ("I will eat"), Italian uses the futuro semplice of the main verb itself (mangerò). Volere is reserved for desire — never for raw futurity.

Volere in idiomatic constructions

Two high-frequency constructions worth knowing:

Volerci = "to take" (in the sense of being needed: time, money, effort).

Volerne a qualcuno = "to hold a grudge against someone."

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

Volere is one verb with one core meaning (to want), but each tense colors that wanting differently:

1. Voglio — direct, present desire. Soften it in service contexts.
2. Volevo — past background OR polite present request (the imperfetto di cortesia).
3. Vorrei — polite default for "I'd like." Use it everywhere you would say "I'd like" in English.
4. Ho voluto — wanted AND did. Equivalent to "insisted on."
5. Avrei voluto — wanted but did NOT. Counterfactual regret.
6. Vorrò — rare; never replaces the futuro semplice of the main verb.

The biggest English-transfer trap is treating vorrei as a future. It isn't. Italian keeps desire (volere) and futurity (futuro semplice) on separate tracks, and conflating them is one of the cleanest tells of an English-speaking learner. Once vorrei sits firmly in the polite-request slot, the rest of the system clicks into place.

For the auxiliary-switching pattern across all modals, see modal verbs and auxiliary choice. For the polite condizionale system more broadly, see conditional present: polite usage.