Augmentatives: What are they and how to form them in Brazilian Portuguese?

An augmentative is a special form of a word that is mostly used to indicate that something is especially large or imposing or that it has a significant or large amount of a quality. In Brazilian Portuguese, augmentatives are most often formed by adding -(z)ão or -(z)ona to the end of a noun or an adjective. For example:

A few other endings, like -aço, or words, like muito (meaning very), can also be used to create the same effect, as in:

If you are curious to know more about the form and uses of augmentatives in Brazilian Portuguese, this post is perfect for you.

Augmentatives in Brazilian Portuguese are most often created through the addition of a suffix to nouns and adjectives. The most common augmentative endings in Brazilian Portuguese are -ão and -ona, as in:

• Noun:

  • livro

    Translation: book

    ⇛

    livrão

    Translation: big book
  • casa

    Translation: house

    ⇛

    casona

    Translation: big house

• Adjective:

  pé

  Translation: foot

  ⇛

  pezão

  Translation: big foot

Below, we will talk more about each of these endings and their uses.

Most words in Brazilian Portuguese have more than one augmentative form. This means that in addition to -(z)ão and -(z)ona, sometimes augmentatives can also be made using other suffixes, like -alhão, -(z)arrão, -eirão, -aça, -aço, -ázio, -uça. These other endings tend to be more colloquial or informal. Let’s take a look at some of them.

• -aça, -aço, -uça, and -ázio are suffixes often added to nouns, and more rarely to adjectives, to form augmentatives.

  amigo (meaning friend) ⇒ amigaço (meaning big friend)

• -arra and -orra are suffixes added to nouns.

  boca (meaning mouth) ⇒ bocarra (meaning big mouth)

Both of the words amigo (meaning male friend) and boca (meaning mouth) also have more traditional augmentative forms, made with the suffixes -ão and -ona (amigão, and bocão/bocona). These less traditional forms (amigaço, and bocarra), are more often used in everyday written or spoken language.

Take a look at this longer list of the suffixes used to make augmentatives in Brazilian Portuguese, or this list of words that have more than one form for the augmentative to learn more!

Let’s now talk about the gender of augmentatives. Based on what we have already seen, the gender of an augmentative depends on the type of word that the augmentative ending is attaching to. Let’s review how to decide the gender of augmentatives for nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs.

• Nouns:

  In general, augmentative nouns take either the masculine ending -(z)ão or the feminine ending -(z)ona.

  femininemasculine

  o garoto ⇒ o garotão

  Translation: the boy ⇒ the big boy

  a garota ⇒ a garotona

  Translation: the girl ⇒ the big girl

  However, as discussed above, feminine nouns can take either -(z)ão or -(z)ona, as in:

  femininemasculine

  a mesa ⇒ o mesão / a mesona

  Translation: He is bossy. ⇒ They are bossy

• Adjectives:

  Augmentative adjectives end with -(z)ão or -(z)ona depending on the gender of the noun they agree with.

  Unlike augmentative nouns, augmentative adjectives must agree in gender with the noun, so only one of the augmentative endings can be used appropriately in context, for example:

  femininemasculine

  solteiro ⇒ solteirão

  Translation: single → bachelor (said of a man)

  solteira ⇒ solteirona

  Translation: single → spinster (said of a woman)

• Adverbs:

  Adverbs are invariable words, meaning they don’t have a masculine nor a feminine form. For this reason, adverbs most often take the masculine ending -(z)ão in augmentative forms.

  Carolina chegou rapidão ao aeroporto.

  Translation: Carolina arrived very quickly at the airport.

  In this example, the augmentative rapidão is an adverb, adding meaning to the verb, but it does not express a gender, so the masculine ending -(z)ão is used by default.

• Verbs:

  In everyday spoken language, the augmentatives of verbs often function as adjectives. For this reason, they must agree in gender with the word they refer to, as in:

  Meu cachorro é um fujão. / Minha cachorra é uma fujona.

  Translation: My male dog is a runaway. / My female dog is a runaway.

  In the examples above, the verb fugir (meaning to run away) becomes the adjectives fujão and fujona, therefore adding meanings to their respective subjects, meu cachorro/minha cachorra (meaning my male dog/my female dog) . In this context, they must agree on gender with their subject.

The plural of augmentatives ending in -(z)ão and (z)ona is -(z)ões and (z)onas, as in:

We have talked in this post about how to form augmentatives using a suffix. However, you can also use adverbs or adjectives to add augmentative meaning to a word.

• Place adverbs, such as muito (meaning very), ultra (meaning ultra), and mega (meaning mega), before nouns, adjectives, and adverbs.

  • casa (meaning big house) ⇒ mega casa (meaning mega house)

  • grande (meaning big) ⇒ muito grande (meaning very big)

  • rapido (meaning very fast) ⇒ ultra rápido (meaning ultra fast)

• You can also place the adjectives grande (meaning big), imenso (meaning immense), gigantesco (meaning gigantic), and enorme (meaning huge) after nouns.

  casa (meaning big house) ⇒ casa grande (meaning bigger house)

Check out our post on the placement of adjectives in Brazilian Portuguese to learn more!

In Brazilian Portuguese, we most often use the augmentative form of a word to indicate that something or someone is large.

However, depending on the context, augmentatives can convey other meanings as well. These meanings can include:

• The augmentative implies admiration for the augmented word.

  Vi um filmaço ontem na TV.

  Translation: I saw a great movie yesterday on TV.

• The quality assigned to a noun is extreme, but the noun is normal-sized.

  Ela está cansadaça depois da longa viagem.

  Translation: She is very tired after the long trip.

• An augmentative is a more pejorative (insulting) version of the base word.

  Não consegui ver o show ontem porque tinha um cabeção na minha frente.

  Translation: I couldn't watch the show yesterday because there was a big head in front of me.

Different augmentative endings can lend themselves more to one meaning or another. Let’s now talk about each of these common uses of the augmentative.

In this post, we talked about the form and use of the augmentative in Brazilian Portuguese. We saw that:

• Augmentatives are special forms of words that we use to show that something is large or that something has a lot of a quality. They are the opposite of diminutives.

• The most common augmentative is formed by adding the endings -(z)ão or -(z)ona to nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, as in quentão (meaning very hot).

• Feminine nouns can also take either -(z)ão (the masculine augmentative) or -(z)ona (the feminine augmentative), as in a faca (meaning the knife) = o facão, a facona

• Augmentative adjectives always need to agree with the noun they describe, as in o carro grandão (meaning the big car), a casa grandona (meaning the big house).

• Because adverbs are invariable words, they usually take the augmentitive ending -(z)ão, as in: Marta chegou cedão (meaning Marta arrived very early).

• The augmentative forms of verbs function as adjectives, and for that reason, agree in gender and number with the noun they describe:

  Ela reclama muito = Ela é uma reclamona

  Translation: She complains a lot = She is a complainer

• It is possible to form the augmentative with other suffixes, such as -aça, -aço, -uça, and -ázio, as in golaço (meaning great goal) .

Now you can practice how to form and use the augmentative with this activity.