solicitou

Solicitou is the third-person singular form of the Portuguese verb solicitar in the pretérito perfeito (past simple). It indicates that someone asked for something, requested information, or applied for an item or service in the past. The form is used with subjects such as ele, ela, or você in contexts where the formal or third-person singular is appropriate, and it appears in both Brazilian and European Portuguese, with regional variations in pronouns.

Etymology and meaning: solicitar comes from Latin sollicitare, through the Romance language development that produced Portuguese. The sense evolved from “to solicit, to request” to cover formal applications, such as petitions, inquiries, or requests for documents, permissions, or opportunities.

Usage and nuance: solicitou is common in formal writing, administrative language, legal and bureaucratic contexts, and narrative reports. It is synonymous with pedir or requerer in many situations, but carries a more formal or procedural tone. Examples include: Ela solicitou informações à instituição; O candidato solicitou a prorrogação do prazo; O órgão solicitou documentos adicionais.

Conjugation notes: solicitou is part of the regular -ar verb conjugation in the pretérito perfeito. The full set for this tense is: eu solicitei, tu solicitaste (Portugal), ele solicitou, nós solicitamos, vós solicitastes (Portugal), eles solicitaram. In Brazilian Portuguese, the second-person singular form is typically expressed as você solicitou, and the plural as vocês solicitaram, rather than vós forms.