Comincer

Comincer is the stem used for the conjugation of the Italian verb cominciare, which means to begin or to start. In contemporary Italian, the infinitive is cominciare; comincer is not used as an independent infinitive in standard usage, but it appears as the base or stem in several tenses formed on the verb. The most common forms that use this stem are the future and the conditional.

In the future tense, the forms are comincerò, comincerai, comincerà, cominceremo, comincerete, cominceranno. In the conditional, they are comincerei, cominceresti, comincerebbe, cominceremmo, comincereste, comincerebbero. The stem also appears in the present subjunctive: che io cominci, che tu cominci, che lui cominci, che noi cominciamo, che voi cominciate, che loro comincino. The imperfect and other tenses use the standard present stem cominci- (cominciavo, cominciavi, cominciava; cominciamo, cominciate, cominciavano). The past tenses use the participle cominciato.

Usage notes: cominciare and its cominci- forms are used across the same semantic range as the English “to begin.” The choice between cominciare and synonyms such as iniziare depends on nuance and register. Comincer is mainly of grammatical interest as the tense-stem in Italian verb conjugation rather than as an independent lexical item.