🔍 In short. The italian verb suffixes -eggiare, -icchiare/-acchiare/-ucchiare, and -azzare are the engine that turns nouns, adjectives, and other verbs into new verbs with a specific colour. -eggiare typically forms a verb from a noun or adjective with a frequentative or characteristic-action sense: lampo becomes lampeggiare (to flash), scarso becomes scarseggiare (to be in short supply), fronte becomes fronteggiare (to face up to). The -icchiare family attenuates an existing verb, scaling it down to a half-hearted or intermittent version: leggere becomes leggiucchiare (to skim-read), vivere becomes vivacchiare (to scrape by), cantare becomes canticchiare (to hum). -azzare adds an intense, rough, often slightly pejorative colour, almost always paired with the prefix s-: svolazzare (to flutter about), sghignazzare (to cackle), sbevazzare (to booze). This B2 guide covers the formation rules, productivity, register, the conjugation shift to first-conjugation, and the false-friend traps.
Get the italian verb suffixes under control and your reading speed jumps. Once you map these italian verb suffixes, a single verb you have never seen suddenly tells you its frequency, its intensity, and its register, all from its ending.
Cosa impareremo oggi
👆🏻 Jump to section
- What italian verb suffixes do
- The -eggiare family: action and characteristic
- The -icchiare family: doing it half-way
- The -azzare family: rough and intense
- Conjugation: everything goes first group
- Productivity: which suffixes still spawn new verbs
- Register: when these verbs sound right
- Pitfalls and false friends
- Cheat sheet: italian verb suffixes
- Dialogue: at the market in Foggia
- Frequently asked questions
- Related guides
What italian verb suffixes do
Spend ten minutes in an enoteca in Foggia and you will hear half a dozen verbs that nobody ever taught you, all built from words you do know via italian verb suffixes. A vendor says the cherries scarseggiano this week (from scarso, “scarce”); a customer admits she only leggiucchia the wine labels (from leggere, with the attenuative twist); a child is told to stop schiamazzare in the aisle (from chiamare, with the intensive-pejorative -azzare). The italian verb suffixes are a quiet productivity machine: they let speakers coin a verb on the fly and the listener understands it.
Three families of italian verb suffixes do most of the work at B2 level. The first turns nouns, adjectives, and even adverbs into verbs that describe an action or a characteristic state (-eggiare and its learnèd cousin -izzare). The second takes an existing verb and softens it, turning the action into a partial, intermittent, or slightly ironic version of itself (-icchiare, -acchiare, -ucchiare). The third also takes an existing verb but pushes the other way, intensifying the action with a rough, often unflattering edge (-azzare, usually with the prefix s-). Treccani lists them together as suffissi alterativi dei verbi, alongside the gentler -ettare and -ottare.
- Le ciliegie scarseggiano questa settimana, signora.
Cherries are in short supply this week, ma’am. - Tiziana ha leggiucchiato il giornale in pausa pranzo.
Tiziana skim-read the newspaper during her lunch break. - I bambini hanno schiamazzato per tutto il pomeriggio in cortile.
The kids made a racket all afternoon in the courtyard.
The -eggiare family: action and characteristic
The suffix -eggiare is the most common factory for italian verb suffixes built from nouns and adjectives. Pasolini uses it constantly in his Friulian poems and his Roman novels alike, because it gives a single verb the weight of a whole description. The base supplies the meaning; -eggiare turns it into a continuous or characteristic action. From the noun lampo (“flash, lightning”) you get lampeggiare, that is, “to flash, to give off light-flashes”, which is what lightning does in a storm and what indicators do at a junction. From the adjective scarso (“scarce”) comes scarseggiare, “to be in short supply”: the verb already contains the durative idea, you do not need to add essere.
- L’orizzonte lampeggiava verso est, segno di temporale in arrivo.
The horizon was flashing to the east, a sign of an incoming storm. - In agosto a Foggia l’acqua scarseggia e i pozzi soffrono.
In August in Foggia water is scarce and the wells suffer. - Bernardo ha fronteggiato la situazione con calma, senza alzare la voce.
Bernardo faced the situation calmly, without shift his voice. - I cipressi verdeggiavano lungo la strada per Lucera.
The cypresses gleamed green along the road to Lucera.
Three patterns recur in this family of italian verb suffixes. From a noun: schiaffo (slap) gives schiaffeggiare (to slap repeatedly); noleggio (rental) gives noleggiare (to rent); costa (coast) gives costeggiare (to skirt the coast or, by extension, any edge). From an adjective: scarso gives scarseggiare; bianco gives biancheggiare (to gleam white); folle gives folleggiare (to act wildly). From an adverb, rarer: indietro gives indietreggiare (to step back). Notice the meaning is never a simple “do X once”: there is always a continuous, characteristic, or repeated quality baked into the suffix, which is why Treccani calls many of these intransitive verbs of essere in a state or of doing in a typical way.
🔍 -eggiare vs -izzare. Treccani notes that -eggiare has a learnèd variant -izzare, but the two rarely share the same value. -izzare tends toward technical, scientific, or causative meanings (realizzare, computerizzare, sintetizzare); -eggiare stays in the area of action-as-typical-behaviour. When you can pick either, the -eggiare form sounds older and less neutral: amoreggiare (“to flirt”) versus the colder idealizzare.
The -icchiare family: doing it half-way
If -eggiare builds a new verb from a noun, the trio -icchiare, -acchiare, -ucchiare takes a verb you already have and turns down the volume. The Treccani entry on ucchiare calls them suffissi alterativi indicating intermittency, lack of continuity or intensity, often with a slightly negative or self-deprecating colour. Leggere is “to read” with full attention; leggiucchiare is what you do when you flip through a magazine at the doctor’s office. Vivere is “to live”; vivacchiare is to get by, to live a thin life without flourishing, with that exact bitter undertone.
- Tiziana ha solo canticchiato una canzone mentre lavava i piatti.
Tiziana just hummed a song while doing the dishes. - Bernardo lavoricchia in un’edicola tre mattine alla settimana.
Bernardo does a bit of work at a newsstand three mornings a week. - Dopo cena ho sonnecchiato sul divano per mezz’ora.
After dinner I dozed off on the sofa for half an hour. - Il gatto rubacchia il prosciutto se lascio il piatto sul tavolo.
The cat nicks bits of ham if I leave the plate on the table.
Within these italian verb suffixes the vowel choice (-i-, -a-, or -u-) usually depends on the base verb’s conjugation class and on euphony, not on a strict rule. Cantare (first conjugation) takes -icchiare: canticchiare. Rubare (first) takes -acchiare: rubacchiare. Mangiare takes -ucchiare: mangiucchiare, “to nibble”. Dormire (third conjugation) and vivere (second) both end up first-conjugation when altered: dormicchiare, vivacchiare. This is the standard pattern for the whole alterative system, as the Treccani entry on suffissi alterativi spells out: alterated verbs all migrate to the first conjugation, regardless of where the base started.
🎯 Mini-task #1. Replace the underlined verb with an -icchiare/-acchiare/-ucchiare alteration that softens the meaning.
- Stamattina ho solo letto il giornale, senza concentrarmi.
- Il bambino mangia il pane mentre guarda i cartoni.
- Dopo pranzo Bernardo dorme sul divano per venti minuti.
- In quel periodo Tiziana viveva con pochi soldi a Bologna.
- Marta scrive qualche appunto sul taccuino, senza impegno.
👉 Show answers
1. ho leggiucchiato · 2. mangiucchia · 3. sonnecchia / dormicchia · 4. vivacchiava · 5. scrivacchia
The -azzare family: rough and intense
The third family of italian verb suffixes pushes in the opposite direction. -azzare takes a base verb and intensifies it, almost always with a rough, frequentative, slightly pejorative colour. The Treccani vocabolary entry defines it as “suffisso verbale alterativo avente valore intensivo, frequentativo, cui s’aggiunge per lo più una coloritura peggiorativa”. The prefix s- is almost obligatory: svolazzare (to flutter about, said of birds, leaves, hair), sghignazzare (to laugh in a coarse, mocking way), sbevazzare (to drink heavily, derogatory), schiamazzare (to make loud chaotic noise), scorrazzare (to roam around, with the idea of running everywhere).
- I piccioni svolazzavano sopra le bancarelle del mercato di Foggia.
The pigeons were fluttering above the stalls at the Foggia market. - I ragazzi hanno sghignazzato per tutta la serata, infastidendo i vicini.
The boys cackled all evening, annoying the neighbours. - I cani scorrazzano liberi nei campi dietro la masseria.
The dogs roam free in the fields behind the farmhouse.
One persistent doubt with these italian verb suffixes: is it scorrazzare or scorazzare? Treccani is firm on the point: the correct form is scorrazzare with a double r, because the verb derives from correre. The single-r spelling is a common mistake, possibly influenced by the unrelated noun corazza. The whole -azzare family stays small and closed: native speakers do not coin new verbs in -azzare, while they freely invent new ones in -eggiare for journalism or marketing. So treat the -azzare list as a fixed lexicon to learn one by one, paying attention to register: most of these verbs sound colloquial or literary, rarely neutral.
Conjugation of italian verb suffixes: everything goes first group
One enormous practical convenience of these italian verb suffixes: all altered verbs belong to the first conjugation in -are, no matter where the base verb started. Vivere is second conjugation; vivacchiare is first. Dormire is third conjugation; dormicchiare is first. Leggere is second; leggiucchiare is first. So you conjugate them all with the familiar -o, -i, -a, -iamo, -ate, -ano present-tense endings, and the past participle ends in -ato.
The catch with these italian verb suffixes is spelling. -eggiare verbs follow the spelling rule for verbs ending in -giare: the i disappears before another i or e. You write noleggio (io presente, with one i), noleggi (tu presente, single i), noleggiamo (noi, single i kept because it precedes a). Same for passeggiare, festeggiare, parcheggiare. The -icchiare and -acchiare verbs end in -care/-chiare-adjacent sounds but spell out the h: canticchio, canticchi, canticchiamo, present participle canticchiante, past participle canticchiato. The -azzare verbs are routine first-conjugation: svolazzo, svolazzi, svolazza, svolazziamo, svolazzate, svolazzano; past participle svolazzato.
For auxiliary choice in compound tenses with italian verb suffixes, the rule is the one that applies to any first-conjugation verb: most take avere, since they are transitive or describe a controlled action (ho canticchiato, abbiamo lavoricchiato, hanno sghignazzato). A handful are intransitive verbs of state or characteristic action and take essere: è scarseggiata l’acqua, il prato è verdeggiato. When in doubt, check the verb in a dictionary like Treccani, because the auxiliary is part of the lexicon, not predictable from the suffix.
Productivity: which suffixes still spawn new verbs
Not all italian verb suffixes are equally alive in modern Italian, and the productivity gap matters for both reading and writing. -eggiare remains semi-productive: journalists and copywriters occasionally coin new forms (twitteggiare, fotoeggiare, the rare spritzeggiare seen in food blogs), though they sound playful or self-conscious. The neutral -izzare is more productive for genuinely new technical or media verbs (digitalizzare, tropicalizzare, sponsorizzare). The -icchiare trio is moderately productive in informal speech and writing: a native can spontaneously say tweetacchiare or chattucchiare and be understood, with the predictable “doing it a bit, half-heartedly” colour.
The -azzare family, by contrast, is almost entirely closed. New -azzare verbs do not appear in dictionaries or in journalism; the set you find listed in Treccani (svolazzare, sghignazzare, scorrazzare, schiamazzare, sbevazzare) is largely the set that has existed for a century. If you read an unfamiliar -azzare verb in a modern text, treat it as a stylistic flourish or a regionalism, not a productive coinage. For the same reason, do not try to invent new -azzare verbs in your writing: native speakers will hear the strain immediately. Among the italian verb suffixes, -eggiare remains the most active for new intransitive verbs from adjectives, while the alterative families stay broadly stable. The Treccani entry on suffissi confirms that -eggiare has limited but real productivity in modern Italian.
Register: when these verbs sound right
Register matters more with the italian verb suffixes covered here than with most other grammar topics, because the suffix carries an emotional or stylistic charge on top of the lexical meaning. -eggiare verbs are register-neutral when describing physical phenomena or technical actions (lampeggia, noleggiare, parcheggiare); they sound elevated or literary when describing characteristic behaviour (folleggiare, vaneggiare, amoreggiare). Among italian verb suffixes, this register split is sharpest with the -eggiare set: a weather report says il sole splende e il cielo verdeggia without any irony; in a business email, swap verdeggia for è verde.
Among the italian verb suffixes, the -icchiare and -acchiare verbs are markedly colloquial and self-deprecating. Lavoricchio said of one’s own job means “I do bits of work here and there, nothing serious”; said of someone else’s job it sounds dismissive. Vivacchiare applied to a family is a delicate word: it implies poverty without dignity, and you would only use it about yourself or about a situation you know well. The -azzare verbs are mostly colloquial-pejorative: sbevazzare is not a polite synonym of bere; schiamazzare is the verb the police use when they fine a group for “schiamazzi notturni”. Choose them deliberately; do not sprinkle them into formal writing.
Pitfalls and false friends with italian verb suffixes
Three traps catch English speakers regularly with italian verb suffixes. The first is treating every -eggiare verb as automatically frequentative. Festeggiare (“to celebrate”) is not “to feast repeatedly”: it just means to celebrate a specific event. Maneggiare (“to handle, to manipulate physically”) does not mean “to do something with one’s hands over and over”; it means to handle an object, period. The frequentative or characteristic nuance is statistical, not guaranteed.
The second trap is over-using the -icchiare family. English speakers love it once they discover it, and start saying parlucchio l’italiano to mean “I speak a bit of Italian”. That coinage is understandable but slightly off: the natural Italian is parlo un po’ l’italiano or mastico l’italiano. Stick to the attested forms (canticchiare, leggiucchiare, scrivacchiare, mangiucchiare, dormicchiare, lavoricchiare, vivacchiare, rubacchiare, sbaciucchiare, giracchiare, tremicchiare) until your ear has absorbed when natives extend the pattern.
The third trap with italian verb suffixes is the false friend azzardare. It looks like an -azzare verb but is not: it derives from the French hasarder and means “to dare, to venture”. Its conjugation and meaning have nothing to do with the alterative -azzare family. Same with imbarazzare (to embarrass), with ingrassare (to get fat), and with incassare (to cash in): the syllable -azz- appears in many Italian verbs without being the alterative suffix. Look at the morphological history before assuming a meaning.
🎯 Mini-task #2. For each Italian verb, identify the family (-eggiare, -icchiare/-acchiare/-ucchiare, -azzare, or false friend) and give the base word.
- fronteggiare
- vivacchiare
- svolazzare
- azzardare
- mangiucchiare
- indietreggiare
- sghignazzare
👉 Show answers
1. -eggiare from fronte · 2. -acchiare from vivere · 3. -azzare from volare plus s- · 4. false friend, from French hasarder · 5. -ucchiare from mangiare · 6. -eggiare from the adverb indietro · 7. -azzare from ghignare plus s-
Cheat sheet: italian verb suffixes
One table, the whole system. Keep it next to your reading book the next time you meet an unfamiliar verb.
| Suffix | Meaning | Three examples |
|---|---|---|
| -eggiare | Action or characteristic from a noun, adjective, or adverb; often frequentative | lampeggiare (lampo), scarseggiare (scarso), fronteggiare (fronte) |
| -eggiare (more) | Same; literary or technical coinages | biancheggiare, costeggiare, indietreggiare |
| -icchiare | Attenuative, intermittent, half-hearted version of an existing verb | canticchiare (cantare), dormicchiare (dormire), tremicchiare (tremare) |
| -acchiare | Attenuative or slightly pejorative | vivacchiare (vivere), rubacchiare (rubare), bruciacchiare (bruciare) |
| -ucchiare | Attenuative, often affectionate or self-deprecating | leggiucchiare (leggere), mangiucchiare (mangiare), sbaciucchiare (baciare) |
| -azzare (with s-) | Intensive, frequentative, often pejorative; closed set | svolazzare, sghignazzare, scorrazzare |
| Conjugation | All altered verbs become first-conjugation -are | vivacchio, dormicchio, canticchio |
| Productivity | -eggiare and -icchiare semi-open; -azzare closed | spritzeggiare (new) vs no new -azzare |
Dialogue: at the market in Foggia
Tiziana and Bernardo are at the Saturday market in Via San Severo, Foggia, picking up vegetables and fish for Sunday lunch. Watch the italian verb suffixes pile up: a verb in -eggiare for what is in short supply, an -icchiare for what they did half-heartedly during the week, an -azzare for the noisy seagulls.
👩🏼🦰 Tiziana: Bernardo, guarda quelle nuvole: lampeggia già verso il Gargano. Speriamo di non prendere il temporale tornando a casa.
Bernardo, look at those clouds: it’s already flashing over Gargano. Let’s hope we don’t get caught in the storm on the way home.
👨🏽🦱 Bernardo: Sbrighiamoci, allora. Mi serve solo il pesce. Senti come schiamazzano i gabbiani sopra la bancarella di Donato.
Let’s hurry, then. I only need the fish. Listen to how the seagulls are squawking above Donato’s stall.
👩🏼🦰 Tiziana: Aspetta, prima passo dalle verdure. Questa settimana i pomodori scarseggiano, dice mia cugina che il caldo ha rovinato tutto.
Wait, first I’ll stop at the vegetables. This week tomatoes are in short supply, my cousin says the heat has ruined everything.
👨🏽🦱 Bernardo: Allora prendi quello che trovi. Io ieri sera ho leggiucchiato un articolo sui prezzi della frutta, sembrava un disastro.
Then take what you find. Yesterday evening I skim-read an article on fruit prices, it looked like a disaster.
👩🏼🦰 Tiziana: Anche tu canticchi tutta la mattina invece di lavorare. Ti ho sentito dal corridoio.
You too, humming all morning instead of working. I heard you from the hallway.
👨🏽🦱 Bernardo: Lavoricchio, diciamo. La domenica non mi va di concentrarmi. Senti, prendiamo anche delle olive? Quelle di Cerignola.
I do a bit of work, let’s say. On Sundays I don’t feel like concentrating. Listen, shall we take some olives too? The Cerignola ones.
👩🏼🦰 Tiziana: Volentieri. Però attento al cagnolino del banco accanto, scorrazza fra le casse e l’ultima volta mi è quasi entrato nella borsa.
Gladly. But watch out for the little dog at the next stall, he dashes around the crates and last time he almost got into my bag.
👨🏽🦱 Bernardo: È quello che sghignazza ogni volta che il padrone fischia? Mi sembra più che altro un cane teatrale.
Is it the one that cackles every time the owner whistles? It strikes me as more of a theatrical dog than anything else.
👩🏼🦰 Tiziana: Proprio quello. Dài, prendiamo un chilo di olive, due limoni e andiamo. Il temporale verso il Gargano biancheggia sempre di più.
That very one. Come on, let’s take a kilo of olives, two lemons and go. The storm over Gargano is gleaming whiter and whiter.
Count the italian verb suffixes in play: lampeggia, schiamazzano, scarseggiano, leggiucchiato, canticchi, lavoricchio, scorrazza, sghignazza, biancheggia. Three from each family in a single short market exchange, which is roughly how thick these italian verb suffixes sit in everyday spoken Italian once you start listening for them.
🎯 Mini-challenge. Describe your weekend in five sentences, using at least one verb from each family: one -eggiare, one from the -icchiare/-acchiare/-ucchiare trio, and one -azzare. Read it aloud once; if any verb feels forced, swap it for the plain base verb and you will hear the difference the suffix was making.
Test your understanding
Take the quiz below to test what you’ve learned about italian verb suffixes.
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Frequently asked questions
Six questions about italian verb suffixes come up in every B2 class. The answers below draw on the Treccani entry on suffissi alterativi dei verbi and on the Treccani vocabolary entries for each suffix.
What do italian verb suffixes like -eggiare, -icchiare, -azzare actually do?
They turn one word into a verb with a specific colour. -eggiare builds a verb from a noun, adjective, or adverb, usually with a frequentative or characteristic-action sense: lampo gives lampeggiare (to flash), scarso gives scarseggiare (to be in short supply), fronte gives fronteggiare (to face). -icchiare/-acchiare/-ucchiare take an existing verb and attenuate it, turning leggere into leggiucchiare (to skim-read), vivere into vivacchiare (to scrape by), cantare into canticchiare (to hum). -azzare also alters an existing verb but intensifies it with a rough, often pejorative colour, almost always with the prefix s-: svolazzare, sghignazzare, sbevazzare.
How do I conjugate verbs with these suffixes?
All altered verbs become first-conjugation -are verbs, no matter what conjugation the base verb belonged to. Vivere is second conjugation but vivacchiare is first (vivacchio, vivacchi, vivacchiamo). Dormire is third but dormicchiare is first (dormicchio). For -eggiare verbs watch the spelling rule of -giare: the i drops before another i or e (noleggi tu, not noleggii). Past participles all end in -ato: lampeggiato, canticchiato, svolazzato.
Is -eggiare always frequentative?
No. The frequentative or characteristic nuance is statistical, not guaranteed. Festeggiare just means to celebrate a specific event, not to feast repeatedly. Maneggiare means to handle an object, not to do something with the hands over and over. Many -eggiare verbs from nouns are simply normal verbs (noleggiare, parcheggiare, sceneggiare). The frequentative colour is most reliable when the suffix is added to an adjective or to a noun denoting a recurring phenomenon (lampo, scarso, biancheggiare).
Are these italian verb suffixes still productive? Can I invent new verbs?
-eggiare is semi-productive: journalists and copywriters do coin new forms occasionally (twitteggiare, spritzeggiare), though they sound playful. -izzare is more productive for technical and media coinages (digitalizzare, sponsorizzare). The -icchiare trio is moderately productive in informal speech: a native can spontaneously alter a common verb and be understood. -azzare is a closed set in practice: do not invent new -azzare verbs, native ears will hear the strain immediately. Stick to attested forms.
What is the register of these verbs?
It varies. -eggiare verbs describing physical phenomena (lampeggia, costeggia, parcheggia) are register-neutral; verbs describing characteristic behaviour (folleggiare, amoreggiare, vaneggiare) sound literary or elevated. -icchiare verbs are markedly colloquial and often self-deprecating: lavoricchio about your own job means you do bits here and there. -azzare verbs are mostly colloquial-pejorative: sbevazzare is not a polite synonym of bere, schiamazzare is what police cite when fining noisy crowds. Choose them deliberately and avoid sprinkling them into formal writing.
Is it scorrazzare or scorazzare?
Scorrazzare with a double r is the correct form, because the verb derives from correre (to run). The single-r spelling scorazzare is a common mistake, possibly influenced by the unrelated noun corazza (armour), but Treccani lists scorazzare as scorretta. The same logic applies to other verbs derived from a double-consonant base: keep the double consonant.
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Related guides
Three guides that pair with italian verb suffixes, plus an institutional reference on alterative suffixes.
- Italian Modal Verbs: dovere, potere, volere, sapere, the verbi servili system that pairs with any infinitive, altered ones included.
- Posso vs Riesco: two verbs for “I can”, a nuance close to the eggiare/icchiare register choice.
- Italian Pronouns with Modal Verbs: attached pronoun placement with infinitives, which often follow these altered verbs.
- Treccani: Suffissi alterativi dei verbi: institutional reference on the whole alterative system in Italian.
