seus

Seus is a possessive adjective in Portuguese that precedes a masculine plural noun and indicates possession by a third-person possessor or by the second-person formal in many varieties. It is the masculine plural form of seu, with the feminine plural form suas. The corresponding singular forms are seu (masculine) and sua (feminine).

Etymology traces seus to the Latin suus, meaning “his/her/its own.” In modern Portuguese, seus and suas function as determiners that agree in gender and number with the noun they modify, as in seus amigos (his/her/your friends) or suas ideias (his/her/your ideas).

Usage and style notes: The possessive sua/seus can be ambiguous in some contexts because it may refer to the third-person possessor or to the formal second-person possessor (você/vocês). To reduce ambiguity, speakers may use dele/dela for the third person or recast the sentence, for example, o carro dele (his car) instead of o seu carro, or specify the owner with a proper noun. In Brazilian Portuguese, seu is widely used with você to mean “your,” while in European Portuguese there is a stronger tendency to employ possessives or pronouns to clarify ownership.

Examples: seu livro (your book or his/her book), seus livros (your books or his/her books), suas ideias (your ideas or his/her ideas). The corresponding feminine forms are nossas and nossos when referring to nouns of different genders or numbers, following the same agreement rules.

See also: Portuguese grammar, possessive adjectives, pronouns.