Augmentatives: -ão, -ona and -aço

In English, an adjective or compound often conveys these meanings: a huge problem, a great goal. Portuguese can express them with suffixes. Recognising a base word and an ending helps you understand new words, but context and established meanings still matter. The suffix is not always a neutral synonym for grande, especially when describing people. An -ão noun can also be masculine even when its base is feminine, and can name a particular kind of object.

Building it: -ão and -ona

The machinery is simple; the surprises come later.

-ona is the feminine partner of augmentative -ão in pairs such as bonitão and bonitona, chatão and chatona. Noun forms depend on the word and usage: a amiga → a amigona is possible, and -ona can also apply to things. Some established forms use masculine -ão, as the next section shows.

Genuinely big

• «O meu tio mora num casarão antigo.» (My uncle lives in an old mansion.)

• «Ele tomou um copão de água depois de correr.» (He drank a huge glass of water after running.)

• «Tem um cachorrão dormindo na porta.» (There's a great big dog asleep in the doorway.)

• «Que festão foi o casamento deles!» (What a party their wedding was!)

Admiration

• «Você é um amigão, muito obrigado mesmo.» (You're a great friend, thank you so much.)

• «Vi um filmaço ontem à noite.» (I watched a brilliant film last night.)

• «O time fez um jogaço no domingo.» (The team played a blinder on Sunday.)

• «Meu pai é um paizão.» (My dad is the best.)

casa → casarão or casão

Both casarão and casão are dictionary-recorded augmentatives of casa. Casarão can mean a large house or mansion. Other established forms have different endings: homem → homenzarrão, voz → vozeirão, grande → grandalhão. Learn these forms as words rather than assuming one pattern fits every base.

Two common uses of papelão

Papelão, from papel, can mean cardboard. In the everyday expression fazer um papelão, it commonly means to embarrass yourself or behave badly. These are two of its meanings; context helps distinguish them.

-ona and gender changes with -ão

A chata → a chatona keeps the feminine, while a faca → o facão changes to masculine. -ona can also apply to feminine things, as in mesa → mesona. There is no strict division between people and objects; learn the form used with each word.

nariz → narigão

Established forms include nariz → narigão and rapaz → rapagão; these are not a general rule for swapping a final consonant. Narizão is also a valid regular augmentative of nariz.

An augmentative became a name for the elimination round in Big Brother Brasil. In the first season, in 2002, Adriano de Castro introduced o paredão for this part of the programme. Pedro Bial recalls that the production had used noite da exclusão; reports also describe the earlier label a berlinda. The show adopted the new usage of an existing Portuguese word, associated with the image of a firing-squad wall. This was not the invention of the word paredão itself. Sources: Memória Globo, CNN Brasil, Área VIP.

-aço has several meanings. A 2021 study in Alfa, using Brazilian media examples from 2016–2018, discusses intensification (cansadaço), evaluation (filmaço, golaço) and collective actions (panelaço, buzinaço), among other uses. Earlier descriptions already included positive, negative and noisy collective meanings; ricaço is not proof of an exclusively pejorative past. Sources: SciELO — Alfa, Gramática e Cognição.