Acordar

Acordar means to wake up — both the involuntary "to come out of sleep" and the transitive "to wake someone else up." It is a perfectly regular -ar verb, so once you know this one you know the pattern for thousands of others. The interesting part is not its conjugation but its grammar: Brazilians overwhelmingly use acordar without a reflexive pronoun, which trips up learners coming from Spanish (where despertarse is reflexive) or from European Portuguese.

Meaning and stem

The stem is acord- and there is no stem change: the o stays put through the whole present (acordo, acorda, acordamos). Do not confuse it with o → ue type changes you may know from Spanish — Portuguese keeps the vowel.

Be careful: acordar is a single verb that carries two unrelated meanings, distinguished only by context.

1. To wake up (everyday) — Acordei tarde. "I woke up late."
2. To agree / to settle on (formal, legal, = entrar em acordo) — As partes acordaram um valor. "The parties agreed on a sum." You will mostly meet this second sense in contracts, news, and the noun acordo ("agreement").

The "se" question — the heart of this verb

In Brazilian Portuguese, you say acordo às sete ("I wake up at seven"), with no pronoun. The reflexive acordar-se exists but is rare and feels stiff or old-fashioned in BR. This matters because the related verbs you will learn — levantar(-se), deitar(-se) — behave differently, and because Spanish and European Portuguese push you toward the pronoun.

• English speakers: "wake up" has no extra pronoun, so BR usage actually matches your instinct here.
• Spanish speakers: you would say me despierto. Resist adding me: BR is just acordo.
• European Portuguese: PT-PT tolerates acordo-me more readily; in BR it sounds bookish.

When acordar is transitive (you wake someone else), it takes a direct object and is never reflexive:

Note the colloquial proclitic me acorda (pronoun before the verb), normal in spoken BR even at the start of a sentence — see reflexive and object pronoun placement.

Indicative tenses

Presente do indicativo

Pretérito perfeito (simple past)

Pretérito imperfeito (habitual/background past)

Note the accent on acordávamos — the stress is on the antepenultimate syllable, so it carries a written acute. Forgetting this accent is a spelling error.

Futuro do presente (future)

In speech, Brazilians almost always replace this with vou acordar ("I'm going to wake up"). The synthetic future above is mostly written/formal.

Futuro do pretérito (conditional)

Subjunctive

Presente do subjuntivo

Imperfeito do subjuntivo

The nós form acordássemos carries an acute accent on the a.

Futuro do subjuntivo

This tense is alive and well in BR after quando and se:

Imperative

Non-finite forms

Common Mistakes