Recipes, instruction manuals, street signs, and advertising are where you meet the imperative most often in writing. This page shows you the form Brazilian Portuguese actually uses in instructional text — which is not the affectionate fala/come you hear between friends, but the você-based form borrowed from the subjunctive — and explains the surprising fact that recipes freely swap the imperative for the bare infinitive.
The instructional imperative is the você form
When a text gives instructions to a general, unknown reader — anyone who picks up the cookbook, anyone who walks past the sign — Brazilian Portuguese uses the third-person (você) imperative, which is identical to the present subjunctive form. You drop the final -o of the present-tense eu form and switch the vowel: -ar verbs take -e, while -er/-ir verbs take -a.
So lavar → lavo → lave, and bater → bato → bata, and cozinhar → cozinho → cozinhe.
| Infinitive | eu form | Instruction | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| lavar | lavo | lave | wash |
| temperar | tempero | tempere | season |
| assar | asso | asse | roast / bake |
| misturar | misturo | misture | mix |
| bater | bato | bata | beat / blend |
| acrescentar | acrescento | acrescente | add |
| servir | sirvo | sirva | serve |
| repetir | repito | repita | repeat |
Notice that any irregularity in the eu form carries straight into the imperative: servir has eu sirvo, so the instruction is sirva, not serve. This is why building the imperative from the eu stem — rather than from the infinitive — is the reliable method.
Lave o frango e seque bem com papel-toalha.
Wash the chicken and dry it well with paper towel.
Tempere com sal, alho e limão e deixe descansar por uma hora.
Season with salt, garlic and lime and let it rest for an hour.
Asse no forno a 200 graus por 40 minutos.
Roast in the oven at 200 degrees for 40 minutes.
Signs use the same form
Public signs address an anonymous "you," so they default to the você imperative — including the negative, which simply puts não in front of the same form.
Não fume nas dependências do prédio.
Do not smoke on the premises.
Empurre.
Push. (on a door)
Puxe.
Pull. (on a door)
Empurre and puxe are worth memorizing as a pair, because they are on every glass door in Brazil and English speakers reliably confuse which is which. Puxar means to pull (a false friend with English "push") — so puxe = pull.
Advertising shouts in the imperative
Ads use the imperative to push you toward action — buy, take advantage, discover, guarantee. Because the goal is urgency, you will also see lots of exclamation marks.
Compre agora e ganhe frete grátis!
Buy now and get free shipping!
Aproveite a oferta — só até domingo!
Take advantage of the deal — only until Sunday!
Garanta o seu antes que acabe!
Get yours before it runs out!
The recipe alternative: the bare infinitive
Here is the point that genuinely surprises learners. In Brazilian recipes and manuals, the infinitive is an equally normal, equally grammatical alternative to the imperative. You can open a cookbook and find the whole method written with infinitives:
Lavar o frango. Temperar com sal e limão. Assar no forno por 40 minutos.
Wash the chicken. Season with salt and lime. Roast in the oven for 40 minutes.
This is not sloppy or regional — it is a recognized written instructional register. The infinitive reads as more impersonal and "neutral," almost like a list of operations rather than commands addressed to a reader. Many published recipes even mix the two within a single method, switching between misture and misturar without anyone blinking. Both are correct; the choice is one of texture, not grammar.
English has nothing quite like this. An English recipe is overwhelmingly imperative ("Wash the chicken, season it..."); using the infinitive ("To wash the chicken, to season it...") would read as a fragment. So the Brazilian infinitive recipe has no clean English equivalent — the closest feeling is a terse engineering checklist.
Spoken recipes prefer the indicative
There is a third style, and it dominates cooking shows, YouTube tutorials, and a friend telling you how they make something. Here the cook narrates what they do, in the present indicative eu form — a "show, don't tell" style:
Eu lavo o frango, depois eu tempero com bastante alho.
I wash the chicken, then I season it with lots of garlic.
Aí eu coloco no forno e deixo assando uns quarenta minutos.
Then I put it in the oven and leave it roasting for about forty minutes.
Notice that this style is not commanding you at all — the cook is describing their own process and inviting you to follow along. The same dish can therefore appear in three registers: Lave o frango (written imperative), Lavar o frango (written infinitive), and Eu lavo o frango (spoken indicative narration).
Common Mistakes
❌ Lava o frango e tempera com sal.
Incorrect for a written recipe — this is the intimate tu/você-spoken form, too casual for instructional text.
✅ Lave o frango e tempere com sal.
Correct: written recipes use the você imperative.
English speakers (and learners coming from spoken Brazilian) reach for lava/tempera because that is what they hear friends say. In a published recipe it reads as too colloquial — use lave/tempere.
❌ Asse no forno e serve quente.
Incorrect — servir is an -ir verb with eu sirvo, so mixing in serve breaks the pattern.
✅ Asse no forno e sirva quente.
Correct: servir → sirvo → sirva.
❌ Puxe a porta. (written on a door you must push)
Incorrect by meaning — puxar means to pull, not push.
✅ Empurre a porta. / Puxe a porta.
Empurre = push; Puxe = pull. Do not let the English false friend fool you.
❌ Não fuma aqui.
Incorrect for a sign — fuma is the spoken/intimate form, not the standard written negative imperative.
✅ Não fume aqui.
Correct: the negative imperative uses the same -e/-a form as the affirmative você imperative.
❌ Para fazer o bolo, você bate os ovos, misture a farinha.
Incorrect — this jumps from indicative bate to imperative misture mid-sentence.
✅ Bata os ovos e misture a farinha. / Você bate os ovos e mistura a farinha.
Correct: stay in one register — all imperative, or all indicative narration.
Key Takeaways
- Instructional text (recipes, signs, ads) uses the você imperative: lave, tempere, asse, sirva, não fume.
- Build it from the eu form, not the infinitive, so irregular stems come along automatically.
- Recipes may use the infinitive instead (lavar, temperar, assar) — fully grammatical, and the two can mix freely in one recipe.
- Spoken recipe narration switches to the present indicative eu form (eu lavo, eu tempero) — a "watch what I do" style.
- Empurre = push, Puxe = pull. Memorize the pair.
Now practice Portuguese
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Start learning Portuguese→Related Topics
- Affirmative Imperative with VocêA2 — The standard Brazilian command form — derived from the present subjunctive 3sg (fale!, coma!, venha!, faça!) — including the plural vocês forms and why every sign, label, and instruction in Brazil uses it.
- Negative ImperativeA2 — How to tell someone NOT to do something — always built on the present subjunctive — and why não fale is standard even though the affirmative is fala.
- The Imperative in BR PortugueseA2 — How Brazilian Portuguese gives commands, requests, and instructions — the você-form (from the subjunctive), the regional tu-form, the always-subjunctive negative, and the famous tu/você mismatch in real speech.
- Imperative for Requests and Polite CommandsA2 — How Brazilians soften commands with particles, added phrases, and question forms — and why a bare imperative can sound abrupt.
- Imperative SentencesA1 — How Brazilian Portuguese gives commands, requests and instructions — the subjunctive-based você form vs the colloquial tu form, negative commands, softeners, and the polite question alternative.