Cenar means 'to have dinner', and it is a regular -ar verb tied to the food and daily-routine topics. Spanish has dedicated verbs for meals — desayunar (to have breakfast), comer (to have lunch) and cenar (to have dinner) — which English handles with 'have' plus a noun. Ceno a las nueve (I have dinner at nine), cenamos en un restaurante (we had dinner in a restaurant). Because describing your daily routine and mealtimes is core GCSE material, cenar is genuinely useful. As a regular -ar verb the forms are predictable.
Quick facts
Cenar (to have dinner) is a regular -ar verb.
Real sentences across different tenses — the kind of thing you'd actually say or write.
Ceno a las nueve (I have dinner at nine).
Cenamos fuera (we had dinner out).
Compare desayunar, comer, cenar.
Core to describing your daily schedule.
Fixed expressions worth knowing — they come up in listening, reading and writing tasks.
Idiomatic expressions
Cenar is a regular verb. Make sure you know the endings for each tense — especially the preterite and subjunctive, which is where marks are most often lost.
cenar is a regular -ar verb — it follows the standard -ar pattern in every tense. That makes it a good one to drill: if you know cenar, you know the template for all regular -ar verbs.
Type conjugations from memory and get instant feedback. That's how you actually build the automatic recall the exam needs — not from reading tables.
Practice cenar now →Three questions. Press Enter to check each answer.
yo: ceno, tú: cenas, él: cena, nosotros: cenamos, vosotros: cenáis, ellos: cenan
Cenar is a regular -ar verb following the standard -ar pattern.
Use cenar in multiple tenses to show range — present, preterite and future at minimum. This is a key criterion for higher GCSE marks.
Verbs that are easy to confuse with cenar or that behave like it.
This reference is written for UK GCSE and A-Level Spanish learners and their teachers. It is designed for exam revision: every form is checked against standard conjugation rules, and the examples reflect the registers and topics that come up in the AQA, Edexcel and Eduqas specifications. Cenar is a high-frequency verb and appears often in exam papers. For active recall, use the free practice tool rather than only reading the tables.