dormiu

Dormiu is the third-person singular preterite form of the Portuguese verb dormir, meaning to sleep. It is used to describe a completed act of sleeping in the past, as in Ele dormiu cedo or Ela dormiu a manhã toda. In Brazilian Portuguese, the same form is also used with the pronoun você, which is treated grammatically as third person singular, to mean “you slept.”

Etymology and usage notes: Dormiu derives from the Latin verb dormire, through the development of Old and Modern Portuguese forms for dormir. As a standard -ir verb in the preterite tense, dormiu appears alongside eu dormi, tu dormiste, nós dormimos, vós dormistes, e eles dormiram. The form is common in narrative and descriptive past tense, and conversation uses dormiu whenever the subject is he, she, or the polite you.

See also: dormir, pretérito perfeito, Portuguese conjugation.