Dar Conjugation: All Tenses, Explained Simply (with Examples)

Dar is one of the shortest verbs in Spanish, and one of the busiest. It means “to give”, it turns up in half the idioms you'll ever learn ( dar un paseo, darse cuenta, dar igual ), and despite having a tidy little one-letter stem, it's deceptively irregular. It's an -ar verb that quietly borrows its preterite endings from the -er/-ir camp: di, diste, dio. Why would a verb do that to you?

Don't worry. By the end of this guide you'll have every tense of dar laid out in clean tables, with example sentences for each, plus a rundown of the idioms that make this tiny verb worth learning properly. But first, the hack that saves you weeks of work.

The Dar Conjugation Hack: Learn These First

Here's the honest truth about conjugation tables: you do not need to memorise all seventeen tenses before you can use dar in real conversation. Native-sounding beginners lean on a tiny handful of forms.

If you learn nothing else today, learn the present tense of dar by heart:

doy (“I give”), das (“you give”), da (“he/she/it gives”), damos (“we give”), dais (“you all give”), dan (“they give”)

That single row of six words will carry you through gift-giving, favours, directions, and a good chunk of everyday idioms. Add the preterite ( di, “I gave”) for one-off past events and the imperfect ( daba, “I used to give”) for habits and background description, and you've covered the vast majority of everyday speech. Everything below that is for rounding out your Spanish over time, not for blocking you today.

Right, now let's build the full picture.

Dar at a Glance

Infinitive

dar

Gerund (-ing)

dando

Past participle

dado

Verb type

irregular

English meaning

“to give”

A quick note on the pronouns I'll use in every table:

Spanish

English

yo

I

tú

you (informal singular)

él / ella / usted

he / she / you (formal singular)

nosotros / nosotras

we

vosotros / vosotras

you all (informal, Spain)

ellos / ellas / ustedes

they / you all (formal)

Dar Conjugation: Indicative Mood (Simple Tenses)

The indicative is the everyday, “stating facts” mood, and these five simple tenses are the backbone of dar. Here they all are in one place:

Pronoun

Present

Preterite

Imperfect

Future

Conditional

yo

doy

di

daba

daré

daría

tú

das

diste

dabas

darás

darías

él / ella / usted

da

dio

daba

dará

daría

nosotros/as

damos

dimos

dábamos

daremos

daríamos

vosotros/as

dais

disteis

dabais

daréis

daríais

ellos / ellas / ustedes

dan

dieron

daban

darán

darían

And here's each one in action:

Present – Te doy mi palabra. – “I give you my word.”

Preterite (a finished past event) – Le di las gracias por su ayuda. – “I thanked him for his help.”

Imperfect (a past description or repeated action) – De niña, mi abuela siempre me daba caramelos. – “As a child, my grandmother always used to give me sweets.”

Future – Te daré la respuesta mañana. – “I'll give you the answer tomorrow.”

Conditional – Me daría mucha alegría verte. – “It would give me great joy to see you.”

Dar Conjugation: Indicative Mood (Compound Tenses)

Good news here: the compound tenses are the easy part. Every one of them is simply the verb haber (conjugated) plus the past participle dado. Learn haber once and these fall into place for every verb in Spanish.

Pronoun

Present Perfect

Pluperfect

Future Perfect

Conditional Perfect

yo

he dado

había dado

habré dado

habría dado

tú

has dado

habías dado

habrás dado

habrías dado

él / ella / usted

ha dado

había dado

habrá dado

habría dado

nosotros/as

hemos dado

habíamos dado

habremos dado

habríamos dado

vosotros/as

habéis dado

habíais dado

habréis dado

habríais dado

ellos / ellas / ustedes

han dado

habían dado

habrán dado

habrían dado

Present perfect – Me has dado una idea genial. – “You've given me a great idea.”

Pluperfect – Ya le había dado las llaves antes de irme. – “I had already given him the keys before I left.”

Future perfect – Para entonces, ya habremos dado el paseo. – “By then, we'll have already taken the walk.”

Conditional perfect – Habría dado cualquier cosa por estar allí. – “I would have given anything to be there.”

(There's one more, the pretérito anterior, hube dado, but you can happily ignore it. It's so rare in modern Spanish that even native speakers go their whole lives without using it.)

Dar Conjugation: Subjunctive Mood

The subjunctive is the mood of doubt, wishes, emotion, and things that aren't (yet) facts. It feels intimidating at first, but with dar you really only need two forms day to day: the present subjunctive and the imperfect subjunctive.

Pronoun

Present Subjunctive

Imperfect Subjunctive (-ra)

Imperfect Subjunctive (-se)

yo

dé

diera

diese

tú

des

dieras

dieses

él / ella / usted

dé

diera

diese

nosotros/as

demos

diéramos

diésemos

vosotros/as

deis

dierais

dieseis

ellos / ellas / ustedes

den

dieran

diesen

Notice the accent on dé in the yo and él/ella/usted forms. Without it, de is a completely different word, the preposition meaning “of” or “from”. That little mark is doing loads of work.

The imperfect subjunctive has two forms, the -ra and the -se. They mean exactly the same thing and are interchangeable; the -ra form is more common in speech, especially in Latin America, so lead with that one.

Present subjunctive – Espero que me dé una segunda oportunidad. – “I hope he gives me a second chance.”

Imperfect subjunctive – Si me dieras la oportunidad, te sorprendería. – “If you gave me the chance, I'd surprise you.”

The subjunctive also has compound forms, built (again) from haber plus dado:

Pronoun

Present Perfect Subj.

Pluperfect Subj.

yo

haya dado

hubiera / hubiese dado

tú

hayas dado

hubieras / hubieses dado

él / ella / usted

haya dado

hubiera / hubiese dado

nosotros/as

hayamos dado

hubiéramos / hubiésemos dado

vosotros/as

hayáis dado

hubierais / hubieseis dado

ellos / ellas / ustedes

hayan dado

hubieran / hubiesen dado

There's also a future subjunctive ( diere, dieres…), but you can safely file it under “nice to recognise, never need to produce”. It survives only in legal documents and old-fashioned proverbs.

Dar Conjugation: Imperative Mood (Commands)

Telling someone to “give” something uses the imperative, and dar has one quirk worth flagging: the informal tú command and the negative tú command don't look anything alike.

Pronoun

Affirmative

Negative

tú

da

no des

usted

dé

no dé

nosotros/as

demos

no demos

vosotros/as

dad

no deis

ustedes

den

no den

¡Da la vuelta a la izquierda! – “Turn left!”

No des tantas vueltas al asunto. – “Stop going round in circles about it.”

When to Use Dar

Dar covers literal giving, obviously, handing something to someone, giving a gift, giving your word. But where it earns its keep is in the huge stack of everyday idioms built on it. Learn these and your Spanish will sound instantly more natural:

Literal giving – Te doy este regalo. – “I'm giving you this present.”

dar un paseo (“to take a walk”) – Vamos a dar un paseo por la playa. – “Let's take a walk along the beach.”

darse cuenta (de) (“to realise”) – No me di cuenta de la hora. – “I didn't realise what time it was.”

dar igual (“to not matter, to make no difference”) – Me da igual qué película veamos. – “It doesn't matter to me which film we watch.”

dar a (“to face, to overlook”) – Mi ventana da al jardín. – “My window looks out onto the garden.”

A few more worth banking: dar las gracias (to thank), dar un abrazo (to give a hug), darse prisa (to hurry up), dar con (to come across, to find).

None of these translate word for word, so treat them as vocabulary in their own right rather than trying to reconstruct them from “give” each time.

Why Is Dar Irregular?

Dar is an -ar verb, so by the regular rules its preterite should look like dé, daste, dó, damos, dasteis, daron. It doesn't. Instead it borrows the preterite pattern normally reserved for -er and -ir verbs: di, diste, dio, dimos, disteis, dieron. That's…