When learning reflexive verbs, people often want to identify all the verbs that follow this pattern. If you’re going through the same process, in this article, you’ll find a list of the top reflexive verbs in Spanish.
Here is a quick overview of what we’ll cover:
23 Must-Know Reflexive Verbs
24 Common Reflexive Verbs in Spanish for Daily Routines
Verbs that Change their Meaning in Reflexive Form
Download the Top Spanish Reflexive Verbs PDF
Before we start, I wanted to give you a little word of caution.
There are hundreds of reflexive verbs in Spanish. However, this is a curated list that contains the most common verbs you must know. And since they behave the same, this list of reflexive verbs in Spanish will also include a few pronominal and reciprocal verbs.
23 Must-Know Reflexive Verbs in Spanish
When starting to learn Spanish, many people assume that reflexive verbs are only used to talk about someone’s daily routine. However, you can use these types of verbs in other everyday situations.
Below is a list of common reflexive verbs in Spanish that you should learn:
Aburrirse – To get bored
Acordarse – To remember
Acostumbrarse – To get used to
Aprenderse – To learn by heart
Besarse – To kiss
Callarse – To shut up
Cansarse – To get tired
Conocerse – To know oneself/each other
Cuidarse – To take care of oneself
Emborracharse – To get drunk
Enamorarse – To fall in love
Enfadarse – To get upset
Equivocarse – To make a mistake
Despedirse – To say goodbye
Imaginarse – To imagine
Llamarse – To be named / To be called
Moverse – To move
Parecerse – To look like
Pelearse – To have a fight with
Pesarse – To weight yourself
Quejarse – To complain
Reírse – To laugh
Sentirse – To feel
And here are some examples with these verbs:
¿De qué te ríes? What are you laughing at?
Mis amigos no se acuerdan de tu nombre. My friends don’t remember your name.
¿Cómo se llamaba la película que vimos? What was the name of the movie we saw?
Take Note: In Spanish pronominal verbs always work with reflexive pronouns. Reflexive and reciprocal verbs are examples of pronominal verbs. Not all pronominal verbs express that people perform an action on themselves. For example, quejarse, despedirse.
24 Basic Reflexive Verbs in Spanish for Daily Routines
Basic reflexive verbs in Spanish are those verbs that you can use to talk about your daily routine. In the list below, you will find examples of these reflexive verbs:
Abrocharse – To button / To tie / To fasten / To zip
Bañarse – To bathe / To shower
Acostarse – To lay down
Afeitarse – To shave
Arreglarse – To groom / To get ready
Cambiarse – To get changed
Cepillarse – To brush / to comb
Despertarse – To wake up
Dormirse – To fall asleep / To go to bed
Ducharse – To shower
Lavarse – To wash yourself
Levantarse – To get up
Limpiarse – To clean yourself
Maquillarse – To put makeup on
Irse / Marcharse – To leave
Peinarse – To do your hair
Pintarse – To put makeup on
Ponerse – To put on
Prepararse – To get ready
Quitarse – To take off
Secarse – To dry up
Sentarse – To sit
Taparse – To cover yourself
Vestirse – To get dressed
As you can see, some of the reflexive verbs in this list have a vowel underlined. This mark indicates that these verbs are stem-changing verbs.
Here are some examples of how to use reflexive verbs to talk about your daily routine in Spanish:
[Reflexive verb conjugated] + [complement]
Yo me duermo y me despierto muy temprano. I go to bed and wake up very early.
Los niños se están cambiando. The kids are getting changed.
Nosotros nos preparamos para ir a trabajar. We are getting ready to go to work.
Sophie se lava y se seca las manos antes de comer. Sophie washes and dries her handsbefore eating.
Take Note: Many people find reflexive verbs challenging to conjugate because of the reflexive pronoun. If you’re struggling with this topic, you should check my guide on conjugating reflexive verbs in Spanish.
Verbs that Change their Meaning in Reflexive Form
Many Spanish verbs have reflexive and non-reflexive forms. In most of these cases, the core meaning of the verb remains the same. However, there are a few verbs whose meanings change when used in their reflexive form.
Here is a list of reflexive verbs in Spanish that change their meaning:
Verb
Non-Reflexive Meaning
Reflexive Meaning
Aprender
To learn
To learn by heart
Colar
To leak
To sneak in
Confiar
To trust
To be overconfident
Despedir
To fire
To say goodbye
Fijar
To set
To notice / To watch
Ir
To go
To leave
Llevar
To take
To get along with
Negar
To deny
To refuse
Parecer
To seem
To look like
Perder
To lose
To miss out / To get lost
Preguntar
To ask
To wonder
Probar
To taste / To try
To try on
Rendir
To perform / To bear
To quit / To surrender
Volver
To come back
To become
Below are several examples to show the differences between the regular and reflexive verbs’ meanings.
Despedir vs Despedirse
¿Te despediste de tu tía? Did you say goodbye to your aunt?
El jueves despidieron a todos los vendedores. They fired all the salesmen on Thursday.
Llevar vs llevarse
Claudia y Tim no se llevan bien. Claudia and Tim don’t get along well.
Mis primos llevan a su perro al parque. My cousins take their dog to the park.
Take Note: When the verb keeps the same meaning, using a verb in its reflexive or non-reflexive form depends on what you want to convey. If you’re still struggling to understand this difference, check this article on reflexive and non-reflexive verbs.
Download the Top Spanish Reflexive Verbs PDF
Now that we’ve gone through the list of most common reflexive verbs in Spanish, you’ll probably want to refer back to this list later as you continue practicing your command of reflexive verbs and look to expand your use of them. Download a PDF cheat sheet of the top reflexive verbs to study on your own schedule.
In order of frequency, they are: ser, estar, haber, poder, tener, hacer, decir, deber, ir, ver, parecer and dar. Similar to English, the conjugations of almost all of these most frequent verbs are irregular, which means they don't always follow normal conjugation rules.
2,500 words constitute those that should enable you to express everything you could possibly want to say, albeit often via awkward circumlocutions. 5,000 words constitute the active vocabulary of native speakers without higher education.
The number of words to learn to speak a language really depends on your purpose. Remember that 300 to 600 words may be enough to travel, but at least 1,000 words are necessary for a conversation.
If you think about native-level fluency, you'll need to master between 20,000 and 40,000 words, and as you can see the margin is quite large. If you want to have a basic conversation, experts say that you'll just need around 3,000 words.
It takes between 90 and 100 hours to reach a basic level of Spanish that allows you to use and understand common everyday expressions and basic phrases.
1. Subjunctive. This might be one of the hardest things to get. After being bombarded with tens of new tenses (in the indicative), you learn there's a whole other dimension of tenses called the subjuntivo.
A good starting place for beginners is to drill the 100 most commonly used words until you can write, speak and comprehend them without effort. One way to encounter these on a regular basis is also to change your phone language to Spanish (or whichever language you're trying to learn).
It's believed that there are about 20,000 verbs in the Spanish language, and 18,000 of them are regular verbs. Regular verbs in Spanish can be classified into three groups.
The "backwards verbs" (gustar, encantar, interesar, etc) are not reflexive verbs. Reflexive verbs are those that use a reflexive pronoun (me, te, se, nos, os, se). With a reflexive verb, the subject and the object are the same; the subject performs an action on himself/herself.
A reflexive verb, simply put, is when both the subject AND the object of a sentence are the SAME. Essentially, a person is performing the action on oneself.
Reflexive verbs are always conjugated with the reflexive pronoun that agrees with the subject: me (myself), te (yourself), se (himself, herself, itself, themselves), nous (ourselves), and vous (yourself, yourselves). These pronouns generally precede the verb.
The formula related to the number of reflexive relations in the given set is denoted by N = 2n(n−1). In this equation, N denotes the total number of reflexive relations, whereas n denotes the number of elements.
A large portion of Spanish verbs can be found in both normal and reflexive forms. But, when you look more closely you can see that some Spanish verbs are almost always reflexive, some rarely reflexive, and of course some in between.
Some Spanish verbs and groups of verbs can be followed by an infinitive with no preposition: poder (meaning to be able to, can, may), saber (meaning to know how to, can), querer (meaning to want) and deber (meaning to have to, must)
Introduction: My name is Kelle Weber, I am a magnificent, enchanting, fair, joyous, light, determined, joyous person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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