Preposition 'Entre': Between, Among | Portuguese (Brazil) Grammar

Entre does the work of two English words: between (two things) and among (several). English forces you to choose; Portuguese lets one word handle both, so the conceptual load is actually lighter than in English — you never have to agonize over "between three friends" versus "among three friends." The one trap that catches even confident speakers is pronouns: careful Portuguese says entre mim e você (with the oblique mim), not "entre eu e você" — a point worth getting right because it's a marker of polished speech.

Spatial — "between" two things

The most concrete use: something located in the space separating two points, objects, or people.

A padaria fica entre a farmácia e o banco.

The bakery is between the pharmacy and the bank.

Sentei entre meus dois irmãos no cinema.

I sat between my two brothers at the movies.

Tem um caminho estreito entre as casas.

There's a narrow path between the houses.

"Among" — within a group

The same word, entre, covers being among or amid a larger set — a crowd, a group of friends, a range of options. English would switch to among here; Portuguese does not.

Entre amigos, a gente pode falar a verdade.

Among friends, we can speak the truth.

Ela é, entre todos os candidatos, a mais preparada.

She is, among all the candidates, the most qualified.

Encontrei a chave entre os papéis da gaveta.

I found the key among the papers in the drawer.

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You never have to pick between between and among in Portuguese — entre is both. Whether two items or twenty, it's the same word. This is one place Portuguese is simpler than English.

The pronoun trap — entre mim e você

This is the headline grammar point. Prepositions in Portuguese take oblique (prepositional) pronouns — mim, ti, ele/ela, nós, vocês — not the subject pronouns eu, tu. So after entre, the careful, standard form is mim, not eu.

careful / standard	colloquial (very common)	meaning
entre mim e você	entre eu e você	between me and you
entre mim e ela	entre eu e ela	between me and her
entre nós	—	between/among us

Isso fica só entre mim e você, combinado?

This stays just between you and me, deal?

Não há segredos entre mim e ela.

There are no secrets between her and me.

Now the honest part: in everyday spoken Brazilian Portuguese, you will hear entre eu e você constantly. It is extremely widespread — arguably the majority usage in casual speech. But it is stigmatized in writing and formal contexts, and a careful speaker (or any written exam) expects entre mim e você. So treat entre eu e você the way an English speaker treats "between you and I": you'll hear it everywhere, but the polished form is the oblique one.

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The rule is mechanical: anything right after a preposition uses the mim/ti set, never eu/tu. So it's entre mim e você, para mim, sem mim. If you've internalized comigo and sem mim, you already know the pattern — entre obeys the same logic, it just doesn't fuse.

There's one famous exception worth flagging: when the pronoun is immediately followed by an infinitive doing the work of a subject, Portuguese switches back to eu — entre eu e você resolvermos isso is a different (and rarer) construction. For ordinary "between me and you," stick with mim. See the emphatic mim page for the deeper rule.

Figurative and idiomatic uses

Entre spreads into abstract relationships: between options, between states, within set phrases.

Falamos de muitas coisas, entre outras, do futuro da empresa.

We talked about many things — among others, the future of the company.

Ele está entre a cruz e a espada.

He's caught between a rock and a hard place. (lit. between the cross and the sword)

A decisão fica entre ficar e ir embora.

The decision is between staying and leaving.

Entre outras (coisas) ("among other things") and entre si ("among themselves / one another") are high-frequency fixed expressions worth banking now.

Os alunos conversavam entre si durante a prova.

The students were talking among themselves during the test.

Common Mistakes

❌ Isso fica entre eu e você.

Stigmatized — careful speech uses the oblique 'mim'.

✅ Isso fica entre mim e você.

This stays between you and me.

❌ A padaria fica entre da farmácia e do banco.

Incorrect — 'entre' takes the nouns directly; no 'de'.

✅ A padaria fica entre a farmácia e o banco.

The bakery is between the pharmacy and the bank.

❌ Encontrei a chave em meio os papéis.

Incorrect — 'em meio' needs 'a' (em meio aos); 'entre' is simpler.

✅ Encontrei a chave entre os papéis.

I found the key among the papers.

❌ Os alunos conversavam entre eles mesmos.

Unnatural here — the reciprocal set phrase is 'entre si'.

✅ Os alunos conversavam entre si.

The students were talking among themselves.

❌ Entre nós dois temos um segredo.

Incorrect word order/meaning — the phrase is 'entre nós (dois)' as the relation.

✅ Entre nós dois há um segredo.

Between the two of us there's a secret.

Key Takeaways

entre = both English between (two) and among (several) — one word for both.
After a preposition, use the oblique pronoun: careful speech is entre mim e você, not "entre eu."
Colloquial entre eu e você is extremely common in speech but stigmatized in writing — know the difference.
entre takes nouns directly (no de / da) and feeds set phrases like entre outras, entre si, entre a cruz e a espada.

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