gravar

Gravar is a verb in Portuguese with several related meanings centered on inscribing, imprinting, or recording content. It is widely used in both Brazilian and European Portuguese and covers actions that are physical as well as digital. The core senses include engraving or inscribing on a surface, recording audio or video, and saving information to a storage medium. It can also be used metaphorically to mean imprinting something in memory.

In everyday usage, gravar most often refers to capturing sounds or images. Phrases such as gravar uma música (to record a song), gravar um vídeo (to record a video), or gravar um podcast illustrate this sense. It is also common to use gravar in the context of data storage, for example gravar dados em um disco (to burn or write data to a disc) or gravar em um pen drive (to save data on a USB drive).

Gravar can also denote engraving or inscribing on a physical medium, for instance gravar uma mensagem em metal or gravar um selo com uma inscrição. Additionally, the expression gravar na memória is used metaphorically to mean “to engrave in memory.”

Gravar is a regular -ar verb and forms gravando (gerund) and gravado (past participle), among other conjugations. The noun gravador denotes a device that records, gravação indicates the act of recording, and gravável or gravável describes anything capable of being recorded.

See also: gravação, gravador, gravável.