ficado

Ficado is the past participle of the Portuguese verb ficar, meaning to stay or to become. In grammar, ficado is used to form compound tenses with auxiliary verbs such as ter and estar, and to express a state that results from a preceding action. For example: “Tenho ficado atento às mudanças” (I have been staying attentive to the changes) and “A cidade tem ficado mais segura” (The city has become safer). These constructions convey a sense of continuity up to the present.

Morphology and usage: ficado is masculine singular; feminine singular is ficada, masculine plural ficados, and feminine plural ficadas. When ficado functions as an adjective, it agrees with the noun it modifies in gender and number. In many periphrastic tense constructions, however, the participle remains in the masculine singular form.

Relationship to ficar: ficado does not constitute a separate lexical item with a different meaning from ficar; it is the participle form used in grammatical structures built around ficar. Its principal role is to indicate a state resulting from a prior action or a duration up to the present, rather than to introduce new meanings on its own.

Regional use: the participle ficado is widely understood across Portuguese-speaking countries, including Portugal and Brazil, and it operates similarly in standard grammar traditions, though stylistic preferences may vary between dialects.

See also: ficar; past participles in Portuguese; compound tenses.