você

Syncope of vosmecê, elision of vossemecê, contraction of Old Portuguese vossa mercee (today's mercê) from Latin vostra and mercēs. Compare with the Spanish usted (from vuestra merced, also literally "your mercy") and Catalan vosté.

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /vo.ˈse/
  • (informal) IPA^(key): /ˈse/
    • Homophones: cê, sê
    • Homophone: ser (with -r dropping)
• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /vɔ.ˈse/
• Hyphenation: vo‧cê

você m or f (plural vocês)

1. (formal in Portugal, informal or semi-formal in Brazil) second-person singular personal pronoun; you
   • 2003, J. K. Rowling, Lya 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 personal 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) and should be used in situations of little intimacy.
• In some parts of Brazil (mainly 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. In Rio de Janeiro , Santa Catarina and most Northeastern States , tu is used in very informal situations, though it uses the third-person singular conjugation of verbs.
• 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.
• Você and vocês, despite being 2nd-person pronouns, should always take 3rd-person verbs.

For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:você.

• vossemecê (obsolete)
• vosmecê (archaic)
• cê (slang, Brazil)
• ocê (eye dialect, rural areas of Brazil)
• vc (Internet slang)

• (second-person singular personal pronoun): o senhor, tu
• (indefinite pronoun): reflexive third-person pronouns (se, si, consigo)