começar

Meaning

1. (intransitive) to start; to begin; to commence
2. (transitive) to begin; to start to do
3. (transitive) to start; to initiate (to cause something to begin)
4. (catenative) to begin
5. (intransitive) to begin (to have a first experience)

Hyphenated as

co‧me‧çar

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ko.meˈsa(ʁ)/

Etymology

Inherited from Old Galician-Portuguese começar, from Vulgar Latin *cominitiāre, from com- + Latin initiāre. Compare Galician comezar. It has been supposed that the Portuguese form developed via an unattested *comẽeçar, but this appears unlikely. The loss of /n/ was likely due to analogy with the synonym empeçar (cf. Spanish comenzar, diphthongally influenced by empezar).

Sentences

Eu vou começar a escrever histórias .

I'm going to start writing stories.

Para comer ? e arranhar ?, um homem precisa apenas começar

To eat? and scratch? a man need only begin

A nova loja Carrefour está prestes a começar a construção .

The new Carrefour store is about to start construction.

Para começar , somos um país historicamente bilíngüe e multiétnico.

To begin with, we are a historically bilingual and multi-ethnic country.