You already know the basic ser-passive: A casa foi vendida ("The house was sold"). This page goes beyond it to the constructions you meet in real news, contracts, and literature — agentless passives, passives inside compound tenses, the passive infinitive, passives of ditransitive verbs, and the se-passive. The single most important thing to understand at this level is not how to build these forms, but when Brazilians actually use them — because colloquial BR avoids the long ser-passive far more aggressively than English does, recasting it as active or as a se-construction.
Agentless passives
The most common passive in real Portuguese has no por phrase at all. You use ser + past participle precisely because you want to omit, hide, or don't know the agent. The participle agrees in gender and number with the subject.
A casa foi vendida no mês passado.
The house was sold last month. (no agent — we don't say by whom)
As provas foram corrigidas e os resultados saem amanhã.
The exams were graded and the results come out tomorrow.
O prédio foi construído nos anos setenta.
The building was built in the seventies.
This is the passive's natural habitat: when the doer is irrelevant, obvious, or deliberately suppressed. Adding por should feel like a choice you make for a reason, not a default.
Passive in compound and continuous tenses
The passive is just ser + participle, so it inflects through every tense and aspect that ser can. In compound tenses, you stack ter + sido + the main participle:
| Tense | Passive form | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Present | é + participle | O relatório é revisado todo mês. |
| Pluperfect (compound) | tinha sido + participle | A ponte tinha sido construída antes da enchente. |
| Future | será + participle | Os documentos serão enviados amanhã. |
| Present continuous | está sendo + participle | A estrada está sendo asfaltada. |
Quando cheguei, o problema já tinha sido resolvido.
By the time I arrived, the problem had already been solved.
A rua está sendo recapeada, então o trânsito está um caos.
The street is being repaved, so the traffic is chaos.
Note that sido (the participle of ser) is invariable, while the second participle agrees with the subject: tinha sido construída (feminine, agreeing with a ponte).
The passive infinitive
When a verb needs to take a passive complement, you use ser + participle in the infinitive: ser feito, ser entregue, ser aprovado. This is the form that follows modal and aspectual verbs like precisar, poder, dever, ter que.
Esse formulário precisa ser preenchido antes da entrega.
This form needs to be filled out before submission.
O contrato ainda tem que ser assinado pelas duas partes.
The contract still has to be signed by both parties.
Esses arquivos podem ser baixados de graça.
These files can be downloaded for free.
English uses the same architecture ("needs to be filled out"), so this construction transfers cleanly. The participle still agrees with the subject of the main verb: as fichas precisam ser preenchidas (feminine plural).
Passive of ditransitive verbs
Ditransitive verbs (verbs with both a direct and an indirect object, like dar — to give) create a famous register split. In formal Portuguese you can passivize and front the recipient with a clitic:
Foi-me dado um prazo de dez dias.
I was given a deadline of ten days. (formal)
Foram-lhe oferecidas duas vagas no exterior.
He was offered two positions abroad. (formal/literary)
Colloquial BR finds this stiff and almost never says it. Instead it uses an active sentence with a third-person-plural impersonal subject, or a fronted object pronoun:
Me deram um prazo de dez dias.
They gave me a deadline of ten days. (colloquial — note the sentence-initial 'me', typical of BR)
Ofereceram duas vagas pra ele no exterior.
They offered him two positions abroad. (colloquial)
The se-passive and the impersonal se
The clitic se builds two related constructions that feel much more natural to Brazilians than the long ser-passive.
The se-passive (passiva sintética) attaches se to a transitive verb; the patient becomes the grammatical subject and the verb agrees with it:
Aluga-se quartos para estudantes.
Rooms for rent for students. (classified-ad style)
Construiu-se a ponte em apenas dois anos.
The bridge was built in just two years.
When the subject is plural, careful/formal grammar agrees the verb: Vendem-se casas ("Houses for sale"). In everyday BR, however, the verb very often stays singular — Vende-se casas — treating se as a fixed impersonal marker. Both are heard; the plural agreement is the prescriptive norm.
Precisa-se de pedreiros experientes.
Experienced bricklayers needed. (impersonal — note 'de', which blocks plural agreement)
That last example is the impersonal se: with an intransitive verb or a verb governing a preposition (precisar de), there is no patient to become subject, so the verb stays third-person singular and se signals an unspecified human agent.
Why BR prefers active and 3pl-impersonal
Here is the crucial usage fact. Where English happily produces The bridge was built by the city, spoken BR overwhelmingly prefers two alternatives:
- Active recast: Construíram a ponte ("They built the bridge").
- 3rd-person-plural impersonal: an unstated eles ("they") stands for "people in general."
Construíram a ponte em dois anos.
They built the bridge in two years. (3pl impersonal — the natural spoken choice)
Roubaram meu celular no ônibus.
My phone got stolen on the bus. (lit. 'they stole' — no named thief)
This 3pl impersonal does the same job as an English agentless passive but keeps the sentence active and lively. The ser-passive is reserved mainly for formal registers — journalism, official notices, academic prose — and for cases where the patient is genuinely the topic of discussion.
A nova lei foi aprovada pelo Congresso ontem.
The new law was passed by Congress yesterday. (journalistic — agent named because it's newsworthy)
Common Mistakes
❌ O bolo foi comido por mim.
Incorrect (unnatural) — BR doesn't passivize to put a pronoun agent in 'por'.
✅ Eu comi o bolo.
I ate the cake. (just use the active)
❌ As cartas foi enviadas ontem.
Incorrect — the participle and 'ser' must agree: 'foram enviadas'.
✅ As cartas foram enviadas ontem.
The letters were sent yesterday.
❌ Vende-se carros usado.
Incorrect — the adjective must agree: 'usados'; and prescriptively the verb agrees too ('vendem-se').
✅ Vendem-se carros usados.
Used cars for sale.
❌ O formulário precisa ser preenchida.
Incorrect — the participle agrees with 'formulário' (masculine): 'preenchido'.
✅ O formulário precisa ser preenchido.
The form needs to be filled out.
The recurring trap for English speakers is overusing the ser-passive because it mirrors English word order. The more native-sounding move is almost always the active recast or the 3pl impersonal — save the full passive for formal, agent-worthy contexts.
Key Takeaways
- Agentless ser-passives are common; only add por when naming the agent matters.
- Passives inflect through every tense; in compound forms, sido is invariable but the main participle agrees with the subject.
- The passive infinitive (precisa ser feito) transfers cleanly from English.
- Ditransitive passives (foi-me dado) are formal; speech uses me deram.
- The se-passive and especially the 3pl impersonal (construíram a ponte) are BR's preferred everyday alternatives to the long passive.
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Start learning Portuguese→Related Topics
- Ser-Passive (Formal Passive Voice)B1 — How to form the analytic passive with ser plus past participle, why the participle agrees with the subject, and why Brazilians rarely use it in speech.
- Se-Passive (Sintética Passive)A2 — The passive with se plus a third-person verb that agrees with the logical object — vende-se, alugam-se — and why Brazilians often skip the agreement.
- Why BR Speakers Avoid the Ser-PassiveB2 — Brazilian Portuguese strongly prefers active voice over the ser-passive — why, where the passive survives, and how to translate English passives naturally.
- Impersonal 3pl (Falam que...)B1 — The third-person plural with no subject for 'they/people/someone' — falam que, dizem que, bateram na porta — Brazil's everyday way to report hearsay and unknown agents.
- Passive and Impersonal Voice: OverviewB1 — A map of the many ways Brazilian Portuguese expresses passive and impersonal meaning — and why speakers overwhelmingly avoid the true passive in favor of active circumlocutions.