Presente: Uscire (to go out)

Uscire ("to go out, leave") looks like a regular -ire verb but hides a stem alternation that almost no other Italian verb shares. The infinitive begins with u-, but in four of the six present-tense forms that u- becomes e-. This page covers the conjugation, the alternation rule, the prepositions that follow uscire (which are not what English speakers expect), and the four distinct senses — physical leaving, going out socially, being released into the world, and being romantically involved.

The conjugation

Drop the -ire ending and you have the regular stem usc-. But in stressed forms — that is, the four forms where the stem itself carries the stress (io, tu, lui, loro) — that stem morphs to esc-. In the unstressed forms (noi, voi), the original usc- is retained.

Three pronunciation points must be drilled:

1. The e in esco, esci, esce, escono is open: /ɛsko/. It is the same vowel as in èra (era), not the closed e of séra (evening).

2. The combination sc + i is pronounced as a single soft sh sound: esci is /ˈɛʃi/, like English "eshi," not "es-ki." This is the standard Italian softening of sc before e or i.

3. Escono stresses the root, like every Italian 3pl: èscono, never escòno. This is the rizotonic pattern that English speakers tend to violate by stressing the penultimate.

Why the u → e alternation

This is one of Italian's most distinctive minor alternations, and it has a clean phonetic explanation. The Latin source verb was exīre ("to go out"), with stress on the long i. When Latin became Italian, the stem vowel e of ex- survived in stressed positions but was reshaped to u- in unstressed positions where the prefix ex- + the next syllable interacted differently. The result is a verb where the stressed stem and unstressed stem look completely different — esc- under stress, usc- outside it.

In modern Italian only two verbs preserve this pattern: uscire itself and its compound riuscire ("to succeed, manage to"). Everything else has leveled to one stem or the other.

Riuscire — same pattern, different syntax

The compound riuscire ("to succeed, to manage to do something") follows the exact same alternation: riesco, riesci, riesce, riusciamo, riuscite, riescono. It pairs with a + infinitive to express the very common "manage to" / "be able to" construction.

The English equivalent is "manage to" or simply "can/be able to" when the focus is on overcoming difficulty. Riuscire a is more specific than the bare modal potere — it implies that success was in question.

Auxiliary in compound tenses: essere

Uscire is a verb of motion and takes essere in compound tenses, with full agreement of the past participle. The participio passato is regular: uscito.

The agreement rule is the standard one for essere verbs: the past participle agrees in gender and number with the subject. Sono uscito (man), sono uscita (woman), siamo usciti (mixed or all-male group), siamo uscite (all-female group).

Preposition logic: di casa vs dal negozio

Here is where uscire trips up English speakers. Italian splits "leave the X" into two patterns depending on what kind of place X is:

• uscire di casa — leaving one's own home, no article
• uscire da + article + place — leaving any other place, da contracted with the article

This is not random. Di casa is a fixed expression: casa without an article means "home" in the abstract sense — your own dwelling, the place you live. The construction parallels a casa ("at home, to home") and da casa ("from home"). When you mean "I'm leaving home" — your home, in the everyday sense — you use di casa.

For any other location — a shop, an office, a school, a restaurant, a meeting — Italian uses da + article: dal negozio, dall'ufficio, dalla scuola, dal ristorante, dalla riunione.

If you mean "leave someone else's house," the construction is uscire da casa di + person: Esco da casa di Marco ("I'm leaving Marco's place"). The bare di casa is reserved for one's own home.

Going out socially

The second core meaning of uscire is "to go out" in the social sense — going to a bar, a restaurant, a club, the cinema. Used absolutely (without specifying a destination), uscire defaults to this reading.

The fixed expression uscire a + infinitive ("to go out to do something") attaches a purpose:

Being released: books, films, records

The third major sense of uscire is "to come out, be released" — for any cultural product (book, film, album, video game, magazine issue, software release). Italian uses uscire where English uses "come out" or "be released."

There is no transitive equivalent here — Italian does not say "la casa editrice esce il libro". Instead, the publisher pubblica the book, and the book esce. The verb is intrinsically intransitive in this sense.

Being romantically involved

The fourth use is the social-romantic one: uscire con qualcuno ("to be dating someone, to be seeing someone"). This is the standard Italian way to express the early-stage relationship that English calls "dating" or "going out with."

Note that this overlaps semantically with the social use ("going out with") — Italian doesn't draw a sharp line between "going out with someone tonight" and "going out with someone as a couple." Context disambiguates.

For more committed relationships, Italian moves to stare con ("to be with") or fidanzato/a con ("engaged to" — but in colloquial use just "in a relationship with"): Sto con Luca da un anno ("I've been with Luca for a year").

The imperative

The tu imperative of uscire is esci (same form as the indicative). The Lei form is esca (from the congiuntivo). The noi form is usciamo.

The negative tu imperative is non uscire: non uscire ancora ("don't go out yet").

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

Uscire conjugates as esco, esci, esce, usciamo, uscite, escono — the u → e alternation surfaces in stressed forms (io, tu, lui, loro), and the original u- returns in noi and voi. Stress is on the root in five of the six forms; only noi and voi stress the ending.

Italian splits "leaving X" into two prepositional patterns: uscire di casa (leaving one's own home, no article) versus uscire da + article + place (leaving anywhere else, with article contraction).

Uscire spans four uses that English splits across multiple verbs: physical leaving (esco di casa), going out socially (usciamo stasera), being released or published (il libro esce in autunno), and being romantically involved (esco con Marco). All four are everyday register.

The compound riuscire uses the same stem alternation and pairs with a + infinitive to express "managing to" do something — one of the most useful low-effort constructions in spoken Italian.

Once uscire is solid, contrast it with andare and venire for the full motion-verb picture, and review the auxiliary-selection rules that put uscire in the essere camp.