procurada

Procurada is the feminine form of the Portuguese adjective procurado, derived from the verb procurar, meaning to seek or to look for. As a word, procurada can function as an adjective meaning "sought after" or "wanted," or as a noun phrase referring to a person who is being sought.

In common usage, procurada appears frequently in law enforcement and public notices. It is often seen on posters or announcements to indicate that a female person is being sought by authorities. The masculine counterpart is procurado. In such contexts the word may appear alone as "Procurada" or within phrases like "a pessoa procurada pela polícia" (the person sought by the police).

Grammatically, procurada agrees in gender and number with the noun it describes. For generic references, speakers may say "a mulher procurada" (the sought woman) or "as pessoas procuradas" (the sought people). The related forms include procurado (masculine singular), procurada (feminine singular), procurados (masculine plural), and procuradas (feminine plural). A related, widely used construction in classifieds is procura-se, which means "seeks" or "is looking for," typically used in job or service advertisements rather than in law enforcement notices.

Outside of police or official notices, procurada can appear in media or literature to denote a person of interest who is being sought, though this usage is less common than the explicit label on posters. Overall, the term is understood across Portuguese-speaking regions, with its meaning clear from context as either a descriptor of someone sought or a label for a person sought by authorities.