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usted. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
usted, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
usted in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
usted you have here. The definition of the word
usted will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition of
usted, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
Spanish
Alternative forms
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 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)
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /usˈted/
- Rhymes: -ed
- Syllabification: us‧ted
Pronoun
usted m or f by sense (plural ustedes)
- (formal) second person formal; you (singular)
- (Costa Rica, Colombia, chiefly Bogotá) second person informal; you (singular)
Usage notes
- Functionally, usted and ustedes are second person pronouns, but grammatically, the verbs they govern are conjugated in the third person. (This is the same distinction as seen in English with the difference between "You are welcome to stay here longer" but "Your Excellency is welcome to stay here longer.") In Andalucia, ustedes uses the forms associated with vosotros. See Appendix:Spanish pronouns for details. Compare Sanskrit भवत् (bhávat).
See also
Spanish personal pronouns
- Not used with con; conmigo, contigo, and consigo are used instead, respectively
- Like other masculine Spanish words, masculine Spanish pronouns can be used when the gender of the subject is unknown or when the subject is plural and of mixed gender.
- Treated as if it were third-person for purposes of conjugation and reflexivity
- If le or les precedes lo, la, los, or las in a clause, it is replaced with se (e.g., Se lo dije instead of Le lo dije)
- Depending on the implicit gender of the object being referred to
- Used primarily in Spain
- Used only in rare circumstances
References
Further reading