Masculine

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)

Concepts

you
thou
you
mister
Mrs
sir
thee
madam

y’all

ye
lady
SG

lady and gentleman

gentleman
🤵‍♂️
Synonyms

tú
A1
ustedes
A1
vosotros
A2
vos
B1
tu
A1

грамматически ведут себя как местоимения

usted o tú

vos
B1

busted

sumerced

teus

os
A1
vos
B1
se
A1
señor
A1
ti
A1
te
A1
Translations

vous
Sie
tu
du
tu
Lei
jij
você
u
tu
vostè
lei
👩
tu

tu

Frequency

A1
Hyphenated as
us‧ted
Pronounced as (IPA)
/usˈted/
Etymology

Cognate with Portuguese
Portuguese
você
Cognate with Galician
Galician
vostede
Cognate with Catalan
Catalan
vostè
Cognate with Asturian
vusté
Cognate with Sardinian
bostè
In summary

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 bosanzé, 1620 (Lope de Vega, Pedro Carbonero, portrayed as said by (ex-)Muslims) boxanxé, ca. 1631 (Quevedo, Libro de todas las cosas y otras muchas más, portrayed as said by (ex-)Muslims) usted, 1620 voarced, 1635 voazé, 1625 (Vélez de Guevara, El Rey en su imagen, portrayed as criminal cant) vuarced, ca. 1630 vuasted, 1617 vucé, 1626 vuesarced, 1621 vuesasted, 1597 vuested, 1635 vusté (in Quiñones de Benavente, died 1651) vusted, 1619 Despite similar phonetics, semantics, and plausible chronology, most likely unrelated to Arabic أستاذ (ustād), which is ultimately from a different Indo-European root (via borrowing from Persian into Arabic).

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