você

Contraction of vossa +‎ mercê, literally “your mercy”.

• Hyphenation: vo‧cê

você m or f by sense (plural vocês)

1. second-person singular personal pronoun; you

• “você”, in Dicionário Estraviz de galego (in Galician), 2014–2026

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

• (São Miguel, Azores) IPA^(key): /vɔˈsɐ/
• (Brazil, informal) IPA^(key): /se/

• Audio (Brazil (São Paulo)):

  (file)

• Audio (Portugal (Porto)):

  (file)

  • Homophones: cê, sê
  • Homophone: ser (with -r dropping)
• Rhymes: -e
• Hyphenation: vo‧cê

você m or f by sense (plural vocês)

2. second-person singular personal pronoun, formal or informal in Brazil, formal or semi-formal in Portugal; you

   Synonyms: tu, o senhor, a senhora

   • 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!

4. 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), where it is generally used in situations of little intimacy.
• 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 Grande do Sul, 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 do not use tu.
• Its plural form vós is mostly archaic in modern Portuguese, superseded by vocês, with the exception of some Northern Portuguese dialects.
• Você and vocês, despite being second-person pronouns, always follow third-person conjugation.

• vossa mercê, vossemecê, vosmecê (archaic)
• voncê (archaic, Brazil, rustic)
• vossuncê, vassuncê (Brazil, rustic)
• vancê, vacê (Brazil, rustic)
• mecê (Brazil, rustic)
• suncê (Brazil, rustic)
• sossemecê (obsolete)
• ocê (Brazil, rustic, eye dialect)
• cê, 'cê (Brazil, informal)
  • c (text messaging)
  • se (nonstandard, text messaging)
• vc (Brazil, text messaging)

• → Ambonese Malay: ose

• “você”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026
• “você”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2026