spise ("to eat") is one of the most useful verbs you'll learn early, and it happens to be a clean, well-behaved example of a weak Class 2 verb — the class whose past ends in -te and whose supine ends in -t. Learn spise properly and you have a template for hundreds of other verbs (lese, kjøpe, reise, høre…). On top of the conjugation, spise carries a register distinction English doesn't have: people spiser, but animals — and people behaving like animals — eter.
Conjugation
Class: weak, Class 2 (-te / -t). Auxiliary: ha (as for every Norwegian verb).
| Tense / mood | Norwegian | English |
|---|---|---|
| Infinitiv | å spise | to eat |
| Presens | spiser | eat(s), am/is/are eating |
| Preteritum | spiste | ate |
| Perfektum | har spist | have/has eaten |
| Pluskvamperfektum | hadde spist | had eaten |
| Futurum | skal/vil spise | will eat |
| Imperativ | spis! | eat! |
| Presens partisipp | spisende | eating (adjective) |
| Passiv (infinitiv) | å spises | to be eaten (s-passive) |
The Class 2 pattern, and why -te here
A weak verb builds its past with an ending, not a vowel change. Class 2 uses -te for the preterite and -t for the supine, and the choice of -te (rather than Class 1's -et) follows from the sound at the end of the stem: stems ending in a single voiceless consonant or a long vowel tend to take -te. spise has the stem spis-, ending in the voiceless -s, so it lands squarely in Class 2 — exactly like lese ("read"), reise ("travel") and kjøpe ("buy"). You don't have to think about the phonetics every time; just file spise as a Class 2 verb and the -te/-t endings follow.
The imperative is the bare stem: spis! ("eat!"). Notice Norwegian drops the infinitive -e in the imperative, so spise → spis.
Jeg spiser sjelden kjøtt, men jeg elsker fisk.
I rarely eat meat, but I love fish.
Vi spiste ute i går — på den nye thairestauranten.
We ate out yesterday — at the new Thai restaurant.
Har du spist? Det er middag i kjøleskapet hvis du er sulten.
Have you eaten? There's dinner in the fridge if you're hungry.
Meals: the everyday collocations
In Norwegian you spise a named meal directly, with no preposition — spise frokost, not *spise til frokost. The four meals are worth memorising as fixed phrases:
| Phrase | English |
|---|---|
| spise frokost | eat breakfast |
| spise lunsj | eat lunch |
| spise middag | eat dinner (the main hot meal) |
| spise kveldsmat | eat supper / a light evening meal |
Note that middag is the main hot meal of the day, traditionally eaten in the late afternoon — not necessarily at midday despite the literal "mid-day," and not the same as the late evening kveldsmat. A common verb-plus-particle is spise opp, "eat up / finish your food," where opp adds the sense of completion, just like English "eat up."
Vi spiser middag klokka fem hjemme hos oss.
We eat dinner at five o'clock at our place.
Spis opp grønnsakene dine, så får du dessert.
Eat up your vegetables, and then you'll get dessert.
Jeg har ikke spist frokost ennå — jeg sov for lenge.
I haven't eaten breakfast yet — I slept too long.
Present tense: one form for "eat," "eats," and "am eating"
English splits the present three ways — I eat, she eats, I am eating — but Norwegian has just spiser for all of them. There is no separate progressive ("-ing") form: context tells you whether jeg spiser means a habit ("I eat") or something happening right now ("I'm eating"). If you really need to stress that it's happening at this moment, Norwegian uses a posture-verb construction — sitte og spise ("sit and eat"), stå og spise ("stand and eat") — where the posture verb plus og signals the ongoing action. This is the closest Norwegian equivalent of the English progressive, and spise is a natural verb to practise it with.
Ikke ring nå — vi sitter og spiser.
Don't call now — we're (in the middle of) eating.
Hun spiser alltid frokost foran tv-en.
She always eats breakfast in front of the TV.
spise vs ete — a register split English lacks
Here is something English doesn't distinguish. spise is the neutral, standard verb for people eating. ete (Class 4 strong: ete / eter / åt / har ett) is used for animals eating, and for people only when you want a coarse, emphatic, or jokingly greedy effect — roughly English "wolf down," "gobble," "scarf." So a cow eter gress, but a guest at your table spiser. Calling a person's eating ete in a neutral context sounds rude or comic; conversely, using spise for a cow sounds oddly genteel.
Kua eter gress på jordet hele dagen.
The cow eats grass in the field all day.
Han åt hele pizzaen på fem minutter — han var skrubbsulten.
He wolfed down the whole pizza in five minutes — he was starving.
Related nouns and useful phrases
The verb sits inside a small family of words you'll use at every meal:
- maten — "the food" (from mat); spise opp maten ("finish the food").
- et måltid — "a meal" (note the å); the abstract count noun for a sitting.
- spiselig — "edible," an adjective built from the verb stem.
- en spiseskje — "a tablespoon" (literally an "eating-spoon"), versus en teskje, a teaspoon — handy in recipes.
- spisestue / spisesal — "dining room / dining hall."
Two more patterns round out everyday use. To say you're eating out (at a restaurant) it's spise ute; to eat at home it's spise hjemme. And to invite someone to a meal, Norwegians say Vil du spise (middag) hos oss? — hos ("at someone's place") where English uses "with us at our place."
Skal vi spise ute i kveld, eller lager du noe hjemme?
Shall we eat out tonight, or are you making something at home?
Maten er klar — kom og sett deg, så spiser vi.
The food is ready — come and sit down, and we'll eat.
Soppen ser fin ut, men er den spiselig?
The mushroom looks nice, but is it edible?
A note on pronunciation and the supine you'll actually hear
Two quick things help you recognise spise in the wild. First, the s before p in spise is a plain s in standard Eastern Norwegian — spise is roughly "SPEE-seh," not "SHPEE-seh" — though across the rs boundary in fast speech you may hear a retroflex flavour. Second, the supine spist sounds clipped — the final -t is light — so in connected speech har spist can run together as "ha-spist." Don't let the soft -t fool you into thinking the supine is spise; in writing it is always spist, with the -t.
The verb also pairs with a couple of less obvious prepositions. spise på noe means to nibble at / eat away at something (literally "eat on"): Sola spiser på fargene ("The sun eats away at the colours / fades them"). And spise seg mett is a reflexive resultative — "eat oneself full," i.e. eat your fill — exactly parallel to drikke seg full.
Vi spiste oss mette på taco og sovnet foran filmen.
We ate our fill of tacos and fell asleep in front of the film.
Rusten har spist seg innover i karosseriet.
The rust has eaten its way into the bodywork.
Common Mistakes
❌ Jeg har spiset allerede.
Incorrect — spise is Class 2, not Class 1; the supine is spist, not spiset
✅ Jeg har spist allerede.
I've already eaten.
❌ Han spiset en banan.
Incorrect — the preterite of spise is spiste, with -te
✅ Han spiste en banan.
He ate a banana.
❌ Vil du ete middag med oss?
Incorrect — for a person at a meal, use spise; ete sounds coarse/animal here
✅ Vil du spise middag med oss?
Do you want to have dinner with us?
❌ Vi spiser til frokost klokka åtte.
Incorrect — no preposition; you 'spise frokost' directly
✅ Vi spiser frokost klokka åtte.
We eat breakfast at eight o'clock.
Key Takeaways
- spise / spiser / spiste / har spist / spis! — weak Class 2, the model -te / -t verb.
- Watch the one-letter gap: preterite spiste vs supine spist.
- Eat a named meal with no preposition: spise frokost / lunsj / middag / kveldsmat.
- Use spise for people; ete is for animals or a coarse "wolf down" effect.
Now practice Norwegian
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Start learning Norwegian→Related Topics
- Weak Class 2: -te / -t (spise)A2 — The -te class — preterite in -te, supine in -t (spise → spiste → har spist) — its voiceless-consonant logic, and the one-letter difference between preterite and supine.
- Food, Meals and OrderingA2 — The Norwegian meal names, the takk-for-maten ritual, the matpakke, and how to order food and offer it naturally.
- Verb Reference: How to Use These TablesA2 — How to read the Norwegian verb-reference pages — the five principal parts, weak vs strong classes, and the supine (the har-form).