usted

Meaning

1. (by-personal-gender,feminine,formal,masculine) second person formal; you (singular)
2. (Colombia,Costa-Rica,by-personal-gender,feminine,masculine) second person informal; you (singular)

Hyphenated as

us‧ted

Gender

♂️ Masculine

Pronounced as (IPA)

/usˈted/

Etymology

From vuestra merced (lit. "your mercy" (etymological) or "your grace" (idiomatic)), an honorific style. In 17th-century Spanish, there were a number of variants, including the intermediate forms vuesasted and vusted. Cf. Portuguese você, Galician vostede, Catalan vostè, Asturian vusté and Sardinian bostè. The following list has the variants reported by Coromines and Pascual, with their reported first year of attestation:
Early modern variants
* vuesasted, 1597
* vuasted, 1617
* vusted, 1619
* usted, 1620
* bosanzé, 1620 (Lope de Vega, Pedro Carbonero, portrayed as said by (ex-)Muslims)
* vuesarced, 1621
* voazé, 1625 (Vélez de Guevara, El Rey en su imagen, portrayed as criminal cant)
* vucé, 1626
* vuarced, ca. 1630
* boxanxé, ca. 1631 (Quevedo, Libro de todas las cosas y otras muchas más, portrayed as said by (ex-)Muslims)
* vuested, 1635
* voarced, 1635
* vusté (in Quiñones de Benavente, died 1651)

Sentences

No mucho , porque usted cosecha lo que siembra .

Not much, because you reap what you sow.

Está usted absuelto , capitán Crocker.

You are acquitted, Captain Crocker.