Defective Verbs (Missing Forms)

Most Brazilian Portuguese verbs fill out a complete paradigm: every person, every tense, every mood. A small set of verbs, called verbos defectivos (defective verbs), are missing certain forms — usually the first-person singular present indicative (eu) and, as a consequence, the whole present subjunctive. This page explains why those gaps exist, which verbs are affected, and the strategies native speakers use to get around them. The key takeaway for a learner is simple: when a defective verb has no standard form for the person you need, do not invent one — rephrase.

Why do verbs have missing forms?

English has nothing quite like this. English verbs are remarkably uniform; even the most irregular ones (be, go) still have a form for every grammatical slot. So the very idea of a verb that cannot be conjugated in the first person feels strange to an English speaker.

The reasons in Portuguese are mostly phonological and historical:

• The resulting form would be awkward or ambiguous. For verbs like colorir (to color in), the regular first-person form coloro sounds odd to most speakers and collides in feel with the adjective base colorido. Speakers simply avoid it.
• The form would clash with another, more common word. This is the classic case. Demolir (to demolish) and abolir (to abolish) have first-person forms that speakers historically found unstable.
• The verb is rare in the persons that fall out anyway. A verb like falir (to go bankrupt) is most naturally said about a company or a third party, not about eu, so the missing first-person form is rarely missed.

The classic case: colorir, abolir, demolir

These verbs are traditionally described as having no first-person singular present indicative and therefore no present subjunctive. The other present-tense forms exist normally.

In practice, the third person and the past tenses do all the work:

When the speaker genuinely needs a first person, they reach for a periphrasis — a verb phrase that sidesteps the missing form entirely:

falir — alive only in some persons

Falir (to go bankrupt, to fail as a business) is more deeply defective. Traditionally it is said to exist in full only in the persons whose ending begins with -i: nós falimos, plus the past, future, and infinitive forms. The singular present forms are widely avoided.

Notice the second example uses the periphrastic future (vamos falir) precisely to avoid having to produce a present-tense form. This is the natural instinct of a native speaker, not a learner's trick.

reaver — to recover, get back

Reaver (to recover, to get something back) is built historically on haver, and it inherited only the forms of haver that contain a -v-. So it has the present nós reavemos, the preterite eu reouve / nós reouvemos / eles reouveram (the ou is inherited straight from houve, the preterite of haver), the future, and the infinitive — but no first-person present, no present subjunctive, and no imperative tied to those persons.

Because the eu present form does not exist, you cannot say eu reavo — there is no such form to "fix." You rephrase: consigo reaver, quero reaver, vou reaver.

precaver-se — a verb people conjugate wrong

Precaver-se (to take precautions, to guard against) is the defective verb that trips up even educated Brazilians. Many people assume it behaves like ver (to see) — but it does not descend from ver; it comes from cavere. The forms invented by analogy with ver (the imagined eu precavejo, que eu precaveja) are considered incorrect by the standard grammar, which treats the verb as defective with no first-person present and no present subjunctive.

How native speakers actually cope

The honest reality is that defective verbs are rare in everyday conversation and far more common in writing. A Brazilian rarely needs to say eu coloro or eu reavo in normal life, so the gaps go unnoticed. When a tricky person does come up, speakers use one of three strategies, in roughly this order:

1. Switch to a synonym that conjugates fully. Instead of struggling with colorir in the first person, a speaker may use pintar (to paint): eu pinto o desenho.
2. Use a periphrasis with a fully conjugated auxiliary: vou colorir, preciso reaver, quero abolir.
3. Recast the sentence so the verb falls into a person that does exist — often by making the subject plural or third person.

This is not a failure of the language — it is the language quietly routing around a dead end, and it is exactly what a fluent speaker does without thinking.

A note on what counts as "defective"

Grammarians do not fully agree on the membership of this category, and you should know that. Some traditional lists are quite long and include verbs that ordinary speakers conjugate freely today (for example, many people do say eu demulo-type forms in casual speech even where prescriptive grammar resists them). The conservative, defensible position is:

• Genuinely and uncontroversially defective: reaver, precaver-se (in the first-person present and present subjunctive).
• Traditionally defective, in practice often avoided rather than truly impossible: colorir, abolir, demolir, falir.

What matters for a learner is the behavior, not the label: in these slots, produce a periphrasis rather than a guessed-at form. For the full reference list, see the defective verb list.

Common Mistakes

English speakers make these errors because English has no concept of a grammatically forbidden conjugation — every English verb takes I freely, so the instinct is to force a Portuguese form into the gap. Train yourself to do the opposite: when a defective verb meets a forbidden person, reach for vou, quero, preciso, costumo, or estou ...-ndo and let the auxiliary do the conjugating.

Key Takeaways

• Defective verbs lack specific paradigm slots, most often the first-person present indicative and the entire present subjunctive.
• The gap usually exists because the would-be form is awkward, ambiguous, or clashes with another word.
• Reaver and precaver-se are the clearest cases; colorir, abolir, demolir, and falir are traditionally defective and in practice avoided.
• Never invent a missing form. Use a periphrasis (vou, quero, preciso
  • infinitive) or a synonym.
• The category's exact boundaries are debated among grammarians; learn the behavior rather than memorizing a contested list.