Verbs of Emotion in Spanish

If you are struggling to express your feelings in Spanish, maybe you need to learn more about the most common Spanish verbs used to express emotions and how to use them.

List of Spanish emotional verbs

In Spanish, it’s important to learn the conjugations of each verb in order to use them correctly. Is that emotion part of the present, or does it describe how you felt in the past? Is it an emotion of yours, do you share it with a group of people, or are you talking about anyone else’s feelings?

Take a look at these examples and how the verbs change according to the personal noun and the tense.

Now, let’s see more Spanish verbs that are not inherently emotional, but can be used to express your emotions in Spanish.

By the end of this article, you will be aware of the different ways to express your feelings in Spanish so that you don’t always rely on the same kind of sentences or structures.

“Ser” and “estar”

Let’s remember the difference between “ser” and “estar”. Although they are both translated as “be”, in Spanish, it’s not the same “ser feliz” than “estar feliz” — even if they both mean “to be happy” in Spanish.

Ser refers to a constant state that is part of yourself. Thus, “ser feliz” refers to being happy in a more general way, not in a particular moment. However, if something great happened to you, you wouldn’t say “soy feliz” but rather “estoy feliz”.

Most adjectives derived from Spanish verbs of emotion are used along with the verb “estar” because emotions are temporary.

You could end all of these phrases with “pero no lo estaré por siempre” (but I won’t be [ashamed, scared, etc.] forever). That statement, though, is implicit in the verb “estar”.

Does this mean that you should always express your feelings with the verb “estar”? Not exactly, it depends on what suits you better or what better reflects what you are actually feeling.

Keep reading.

The verb “tener”

You don’t always need to use an adjective to express your emotions in Spanish because you can say that you have a certain feeling instead.

When you are feeling hungry, in English you would say that you are hungry, but in Spanish you can either say “estoy hambriento” or “tengo hambre” (which literally means “I have [the feeling of] hunger”).

But sometimes, depending on the emotion that you want to express, it sounds more natural to use the verb “tener” than “estar”. There is not much difference between “tengo hambre” y “estoy hambriento”, but for example, Spanish speakers do not really have an adjective to say that they are cold. Therefore, “tengo frío” is the only option that sounds natural.

Something similar happens with heat. The verb “acalorar” (to get hot) exists, but you are more likely to hear “tengo calor” than “estoy acalorado”, at least in some Spanish-speaking areas. There is no difference in terms of correctness, but there might be a difference in terms of usage and how natural it sounds in everyday conversations.

How does the verb “tener” work?

The trick to learn the correct usage of the verb “tener” to express emotions is becoming able to extract the abstract noun related to the emotion —that is, the name of the emotion itself.

As we were saying, in Spanish you can have hunger (hambre), cold (frío), heat (calor). But you can also have fear (miedo), anger (ira or bronca), rancor/hard feelings (rencor), joy (alegría), jealousy (celos), sorrow (pena), tiredness (cansancio), exhaustion (agotamiento), embarrassment (vergüenza), discomfort (molestia or incomodidad), or simply a bad mood (mal humor).

Here are some examples of how you’d use these terms in a sentence.

The verb “sentir”

This is the first verb in this list that is exclusively related to emotions. It is another alternative to express your feelings directly telling the other person that you feel that way.

You are not cold. You don’t “have cold”. You feel cold. In Spanish: no estás frío, no tienes frío; sientes frío. And what is the difference between these three? There is hardly any. In terms of correctness, there is none.

In terms of usage, it depends on the case. Maybe if you talk about how you feel, it could be viewed as something more personal or intimate. But it really depends on what you are saying.

How do you feel right now?

As you can see, the verb “sentir” works similarly to “estar”, given that you could also answer to the previous question with “estoy feliz”, “estoy confundido(a)”, “estoy relajado(a)”, “estoy estresado(a)”, “estoy cansado(a)”...

It’s important to note that the verb “sentir” can also express how you perceive a certain situation. It can also be used to express predictions. For example: