você

Syncope of vosmecê, elision of vossemecê, contraction of Old Galician-Portuguese vossa mercee (literally “your mercy”) (today's mercê) from Latin vostra + mercēs. Compare with Spanish usted (from vuestra merced (literally “your mercy”)) and Catalan vostè.

• (informal Brazil) IPA^(key): /se/
  • Homophones: cê, sê
  • Homophone: ser (with -r dropping)
• Rhymes: -e
• Hyphenation: vo‧cê

você m or f by sense (plural vocês)

1. (formal, semi-formal, or offensive in Portugal, informal or formal in Brazil) second-person singular personal pronoun; you

   Synonyms: o senhor, tu

   • 2003, J. K. Rowling, Lia Wyler, Harry Potter e a Ordem da Fênix, Rocco, page 227:

     Pensei que você tivesse dito que ela estava só mandando você escrever!

     I thought that you had said that she was just ordering you to write!

2. indefinite pronoun; you; one

   Você pode levar um cavalo até a água, mas não pode fazê-lo beber.

   You can take a horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink.

• In Portugal and some parts of Brazil, você represents an intermediate degree of formality between tu (familiar) and o senhor (very formal). It should be used in situations of little intimacy, but almost always omitted, otherwise it might be taken as being offensive or demeaning. There is no perfect analog in Portuguese to the Spanish usted, whose role is filled by o senhor in Brazil and o senhor and você in Portugal.
• In most parts of Brazil (especially in the Southeast, with the exception of some cities), você has replaced tu as the informal second person singular pronoun, and tu is relegated to archaic, poetic and religious usages, much like the English thou. In Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina, Brasília and most Northeastern States, tu is used in very informal situations, though it usually uses the third-person singular conjugation of verbs, similar to many Spanish-speaking countries with voseo.
• teu, te, and to a lesser extent ti and contigo, are widely used alongside você in Brazilian dialects that don’t use tu.
• Its plural form, vós, is rarely used in general Portuguese and is now mostly confined to some of the northernmost rural dialects of European Portuguese and poetry.
• Você and vocês, despite being 2nd-person pronouns, always take 3rd-person verbs.

For quotations using this term, see Citations:você.

• vossa mercê (archaic)[1]
• vossemecê (archaic)[1]
• vosmecê (archaic, rural areas of Brazil)[1]
• voncê (archaic, rural areas of Brazil)[2]
• sossemecê (obsolete)[1]
• mecê (rural areas of Brazil)[1]
• vancê (rural areas of Brazil)[1]
• vacê (rural areas of Brazil)[1]
• vossuncê (rural areas of Brazil)[1]
• vassuncê (rural areas of Brazil)[1]
• suncê (rural areas of Brazil)
• ocê (eye dialect, rural areas of Brazil)[1]
• cê (slang, Brazil)
• vc (spelling Internet slang, Brazil)
• se (spelling Internet slang, Brazil)

• (indefinite pronoun): reflexive third-person pronouns (se, si, consigo)