Verb Reference Overview

Welcome to the Verb Reference — a searchable shelf of full conjugation paradigms for the most common European Portuguese verbs. This page is your user manual. It explains what's in the reference, what conventions it uses, and how to get the most out of it. If you came here looking to learn how verbs work, you want the teaching section at verbs fundamentals; the reference is where you come once you know the concepts and just need the forms.

What this section is — and isn't

The Verb Reference is:

• A catalogue of individual verbs, one page each, with complete conjugation tables for every tense and mood.
• A quick look-up when you know which verb and tense you want and just need the form.
• Organised alphabetically, so finding a verb is as fast as scrolling a dictionary.

The Verb Reference is not:

• A grammar teacher. It will not explain when to use the imperfect vs the preterite, or why the subjunctive appears after certain expressions. For that, see the Verbs section.
• Exhaustive. It covers the roughly 150 most useful verbs, including every irregular verb, the top 50 by frequency, and common regular verbs that learners actually need. Very rare or obsolete verbs are not catalogued — use a monolingual dictionary or a conjugator site for those.

Think of the teaching section as the textbook and the reference section as the dictionary you keep open beside it.

How the individual verb pages are laid out

Every verb page in the reference follows the same structure:

1. Header: infinitive, meaning, verb class (regular -ar, irregular -er, stem-changer, etc.).
2. Principal parts: the four diagnostic forms (1sg present, 3sg preterite, 1pl future, past participle) that let you predict every other form.
3. Indicative mood: present, preterite, imperfect, simple pluperfect (literary), future, conditional.
4. Subjunctive mood: present, imperfect, future.
5. Imperative: tu / você / nós / vocês.
6. Non-finite forms: impersonal infinitive, personal infinitive, gerund, past participle, present participle (if used as adjective).
7. Usage notes: prepositions the verb governs, common collocations, register notes, regional variation.
8. Example sentences: 3-5 natural uses of the verb in different tenses.

Compound tenses (tenho falado, tinha falado, terei falado) are not listed separately on each verb page, because they are entirely predictable from ter + the participle. See compound tenses complete for those.

Conjugation conventions used

Six persons, two "yous"

All tables show six person rows:

Some tables compress ele/ela/você into one row labelled "3sg" and eles/elas/vocês into "3pl" to save space.

Vós — why we still show it

The second person plural pronoun vós is archaic in most of Portugal. In modern speech you say vocês instead. We still list the vós column because:

• It appears in the liturgy, in legal language, in literature, and in the Bible — learners at B2+ meet it regularly in texts.
• In some northern Portuguese villages it survives as the actual everyday plural "you."
• Traditional conjugation tables always include it, and students are sometimes tested on it.

If you are learning European Portuguese for speaking, you can safely skim past the vós row. If you are reading older texts, it's essential.

Accent marks are non-negotiable

Accent marks on verb forms are not decorative — they indicate stress position and sometimes change the meaning. Always write them.

Spelling adjustments are not "irregularities"

Some verbs change their spelling before certain vowels to preserve the sound:

• -car → -quei: ficar → fiquei (preterite 1sg). The c becomes qu before e.
• -gar → -guei: pagar → paguei. The g becomes gu before e.
• -çar → -cei: começar → comecei. The ç becomes c before e.
• -cer → -ço: conhecer → conheço (present 1sg). The c becomes ç before o.
• -ger → -jo: proteger → protejo. The g becomes j before o.
• -guir → -go: seguir → sigo. The gu becomes g before o.

These are phonological: the pronunciation stays the same, only the spelling adjusts. They are NOT listed as irregular verbs. See spelling changes.

Regular vs irregular — what counts

A verb is regular if, given its infinitive, every tense is predictable from the standard endings. About 95% of Portuguese verbs are regular.

A verb is irregular if any of its forms diverges from the pattern of its group (-ar, -er, -ir). The boundary cases:

• Spelling-change verbs (fiquei, paguei) = regular.
• Stem-changers (durmo, peço, sirvo) = typically classified as having irregular 1sg present but otherwise regular. The reference labels them with their class name.
• Truly irregular verbs (ser, estar, ir, ter, haver, fazer, dizer, pôr, vir, ver, ler, dar, saber, caber, querer, poder) = irregular in multiple tenses, demand individual memorisation.

The top irregulars are covered in irregular verbs complete; the subclasses are covered in irregular verb groups.

Finding a verb

By the infinitive (most common)

Every reference page has the infinitive as its slug. If you know the verb is falar, go to /grammar/portuguese-portugal/verb-reference/falar. If you know it's ir, go to /verb-reference/ir. The URL and the section navigation both use this alphabetical convention.

By a conjugated form (harder)

If you encountered a form like pus or houve and don't know the infinitive, the chains of transformations can be thick. A few diagnostic tricks:

• -sse endings are the imperfect subjunctive. The stem matches the 3pl preterite minus -ram.
• -r, -res, -rmos, -rem endings (without a preceding vowel change) are either the future subjunctive or the personal infinitive. For most verbs, the future subjunctive is identical to the personal infinitive.
• -ei, -ás, -á, -emos, -ão endings are the future indicative.
• -ia, -ias, -ia, -íamos, -iam endings are the imperfect indicative (for -er / -ir verbs) OR the conditional (for -ar / -er / -ir verbs after the infinitive).

See verb frequency list for a comprehensive alphabetical index.

By meaning (pick a different verb)

If you know roughly what the verb should mean but not which verb to pick — "to put / to place / to set" — browse most common 50 or consult the choosing-guide pages like saber vs conhecer, levar vs trazer vs buscar, pedir vs perguntar.

Tense abbreviations and Portuguese names

Grammar books in Portuguese use the traditional names below. The reference shows both.

Notice that Portuguese grammarians use conjuntivo (Portugal) for what English calls the "subjunctive"; Brazilian grammars sometimes use subjuntivo. Both refer to the same mood. This site uses conjuntivo in Portuguese names throughout.

Common questions

Is this tense still used?

• Simple pluperfect (falara): rare in speech, common in literary writing. Learn to recognise it; in writing, the compound form (tinha falado) is the norm.
• Future indicative (falarei): common in written Portuguese and formal speech; in everyday speech, vou falar replaces it.
• Future subjunctive (falar, quando falar): extremely common — Portuguese learners from Spanish sometimes assume it's archaic, but it is absolutely mandatory after se, quando, logo que, assim que, enquanto referring to the future.
• Vós forms: archaic or dialectal; not needed for speaking.
• Mesoclise (falar-te-ei): literary / very formal. Recognition only for most learners.

Which tense for "I have done X"?

If X is a single completed past event, use the preterite: fiz, comi, falei. This is the false-friend trap for English and Spanish speakers. The English "I have eaten" normally corresponds to Portuguese comi, not *tenho comido.

If X is repeated or ongoing up to now, use the present perfect compound: tenho comido mal ultimamente ("I've been eating badly lately").

See present perfect vs Spanish present perfect — the distinction between Portuguese tenho comido and Spanish he comido is one of the most important learning points.

Which tense for "when X happens in the future"?

Use the future subjunctive: Quando chegares, liga-me ("When you arrive, call me"). NOT the future indicative, NOT the present.

Which tense for a polite request?

Either the imperfect (queria um café) or the conditional (gostaria de um café). Both are standard and interchangeable in most registers; the conditional is slightly more formal.

What about estar a + infinitive vs gerund?

In European Portuguese, the progressive is built with estar a + infinitive: estou a trabalhar ("I'm working"). The gerund form (estou trabalhando) is the Brazilian pattern and will sound foreign in Portugal. See vs Brazilian progressive.

Example: reading a typical verb page

Imagine you've navigated to the page for fazer (to do / make). Here's what you'd see and how to interpret it:

The table would then show:

And then usage notes: fazer is among the hundred most frequent verbs. It means "to do" or "to make." It takes no preposition before a direct object: fiz o jantar ("I made dinner"). It takes de for certain complements: fazer de conta ("to pretend"). In weather expressions, it is impersonal: faz frio ("it's cold"). And a few example sentences would follow.

When the reference isn't enough

If you need a verb that isn't in the reference shelf, try:

• An online conjugator like Priberam's Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (search for the verb in the infinitive, then click "conjugar"). Most conjugators are accurate for Portuguese.
• A grammar of Portuguese (Cunha & Cintra's Nova Gramática do Português Contemporâneo is the standard reference in Portugal).
• Ask a native speaker — Portuguese speakers are generally happy to confirm whether a form sounds right.

Starting points

If you're at A1, start with these pages:

• verbs fundamentals — the big picture.
• most common 50 — the verbs you'll use every day.
• conjugation patterns — the regular endings in one place.
• ser, estar, ir, ter — the four verbs you'll use in almost every sentence.

If you're at A2 or above, the full reference is open to you. Use it the way you'd use a dictionary: when you need a form, look it up; don't try to read it cover to cover.

Usage notes for this section

• Accent marks are written throughout. If you see a form without its accent, it's either wrong or Brazilian spelling — in European Portuguese, keep the accent.
• Register labels in usage notes tell you when a form is (formal), (informal), (literary), (archaic), or (regional). Respect them — using a literary -vos in a café will sound bizarre.
• False friends: Portuguese verbs often look identical to Spanish or English cognates but mean something different. Where relevant, the reference flags these. For a systematic treatment, see false friend verbs.
• Preposition requirements matter in Portuguese as much as in English. Gostar de, not gostar; *precisar de; depender de; casar com. The reference lists the governing preposition for each verb. See also verb-preposition list.

Key takeaways

• The Verb Reference is the look-up shelf; the Verbs section is the textbook. Use them together.
• Every verb page shows the same fields in the same order: principal parts, indicative, subjunctive, imperative, non-finite forms, usage notes, examples.
• Compound tenses are built by combining ter with the past participle — covered on compound tenses complete rather than repeated on each verb page.
• Vós forms are shown for recognition; tu is the everyday informal you in European Portuguese.
• Diacritics are part of the spelling — always write them.
• For regular patterns, see conjugation patterns; for all irregulars, see irregular verb groups.