C2 (Mastery)Lesson 6: Irregular Participles & Defective Verbs
About forty Portuguese verbs carry two past participles — a short irregular one (pago, aceito, impresso) and a long regular one (pagado, aceitado, imprimido) — and the auxiliary in front decides which one you write: ser and estar take the short form, ter and haver take the long one. This point gives you that rule, the verbs worth knowing, the four that have quietly stopped obeying it, and a closing look at the defective verbs that are missing forms altogether.
One rule, two auxiliaries: ser and estar take the short participle (foi pago, está aceito); ter and haver take the long one (tinha pagado, havia aceitado).
The short form is the irregular one and behaves like an adjective, so it agrees: as contas foram pagas (the bills were paid).
The long form sits after ter / haver and is frozen: tinha pagado never becomes tinha pagada.
Worth knowing by heart: pagar (pagado/pago), aceitar (aceitado/aceito), entregar (entregado/entregue), imprimir (imprimido/impresso), prender (prendido/preso), acender (acendido/aceso), eleger (elegido/eleito), suspender (suspendido/suspenso).
Four verbs have given up: ganhar, gastar, pagar and pegar now take the short form with any auxiliary — tinha ganho, tinha pago are normal Brazilian.
Not every verb has a pair: trazer, chegar and empregar only ever take the regular participle, whatever the auxiliary.
Morto is on loan: it is the short participle of matar (to kill), and morrer (to die) borrows it for ser/estar while keeping morrido for ter.
A closing family: verbos defectivos — colorir, abolir, falir, reaver, precaver-se — are missing forms outright, and Brazilians simply reach for another verb.
ser / estar + short irregular participle → foi pago, está aceito · ter / haver + long regular participle → tinha pagado, havia aceitado
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This is the last visible line between careful written Portuguese and everything else, and it is one of the few that Brazilians themselves police. O projeto foi aprovado e o pagamento já foi feito is unremarkable; o pagamento já foi fazido is not a sentence. Between those extremes sits a real choice you make several times a page in any formal text — a contract, an email to a client, a Celpe-Bras essay, a concurso answer sheet.
It is also the one place where the two systems you already know finally touch. You learned the passive with ser and estar, and you learned the compound tenses with ter and haver, and until now the participle looked like the same word in both. It is not, for about forty verbs, and this is where that stops being invisible.
And there is a comprehension payoff: ele tinha aceitado and ele foi aceito are two different events — one is something he did, the other something done to him. Reading past the participle costs you the difference.
Every verb in this point has two past participles that mean the same thing. What separates them is purely the word standing in front:
| Auxiliary | Participle | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| ter, haver | long, regular (-ado / -ido) | Eu tinha aceitado o convite. | I had accepted the invitation. |
| ser, estar | short, irregular | O convite foi aceito. | The invitation was accepted. |
The traditional memory hook in Brazilian schools is TH → regular, SE → irregular: Ter and Haver take the regular form, Ser and Estar take the irregular one.
There is a reason behind the split rather than an accident. After ter and haver the participle is part of a verb, so it is frozen — nothing agrees with anything. After ser and estar it is functioning as an adjective, so it agrees with the subject in gender and number:
| Portuguese | Meaning |
|---|---|
| O contrato já foi assinado e entregue. | The contract has already been signed and handed in. |
| Eu tinha entregado os documentos na segunda. | I had handed in the documents on Monday. |
| As faturas foram pagas com atraso. | The invoices were paid late. |
| A luz da cozinha ficou acesa a noite toda. | The kitchen light stayed on all night. |
| O relatório foi impresso em duas vias. | The report was printed in duplicate. |
| Eles haviam imprimido o formulário errado. | They had printed the wrong form. |
| A sessão foi suspensa pelo juiz. | The session was suspended by the judge. |
| A deputada foi eleita com folga. | The congresswoman was elected comfortably. |
Putting the short form after ter. In careful writing the auxiliary decides: ❌ Eu tinha aceito o convite. → ✅ Eu tinha aceitado o convite. (I had accepted the invitation.) The exceptions are the four verbs in section 3 — ganho, gasto, pago, pego — where the short form is now normal after ter too.
Putting the long form after ser. ❌ O convite foi aceitado por todos. → ✅ O convite foi aceito por todos. (The invitation was accepted by everyone.) This is the more visible half of the mistake, because it lands in exactly the sentences people read closely.
Making the participle agree after ter. After ter and haver it is frozen: ❌ Ela tinha pagada as contas. → ✅ Ela tinha pagado as contas. (She had paid the bills.) The agreement belongs to the ser / estar side: ✅ As contas foram pagas.
Inventing a short form. Not every verb has one: ❌ o pedido foi trazo → ✅ o pedido foi trazido (the order was brought). Same for chegado and empregado.
Reading foi morto as "died". ❌ Ele foi morto no ano passado does not mean he passed away — it means somebody killed him. For a death, ✅ Ele morreu no ano passado. (He died last year.)
Writing eu tinha pagado to sound correct. It is correct and it sounds like a grammar exercise. ✅ Eu tinha pago. (I had paid.) is what Brazilians say and write.
Conjugating a defective verb anyway. ❌ eu coloro, ❌ eu abolo, ❌ eu reavejo are not rare forms — they do not exist. ✅ Eu pinto de azul. (I'll colour it blue.) or stay in a tense the verb has: ✅ Eu colori o desenho. (I coloured the drawing.)
Brazil's federal Senate keeps a written style rule on pago versus pagado: its Manual de Comunicação instructs Senate journalists to use ter and haver with the regular participle and ser and estar with the irregular one. The same entry concedes the ground the rule has already lost, listing ganhar, gastar, pagar and pegar as verbs that now take either form with any auxiliary, and naming trazer, chegar and empregar as verbs that never take a short one at all.
Source: Manual de Comunicação — Senado Federal, "Particípios duplos".
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