tínhamos

Tínhamos is the first-person plural (nós) imperfect indicative form of the Portuguese verb ter (to have). It is used to indicate possession or a state in the past, often describing ongoing conditions or habitual actions. In English, it is commonly translated as "we had" or "we used to have."

In modern Portuguese, ter is irregular in the present tense, but in the imperfect it takes the regular set of endings: eu tinha, tu tinhas, ele tinha, Nós tínhamos, vós tínheis, eles tinham. The form tínhamos uses the stem tin- plus the imperfect ending -amos, with an acute accent on í to indicate stress. The imperfect tense is used to describe past states or repeated actions, to set scenes in narratives, or to report speech about past situations.

Usage notes: It expresses past habitual actions or ongoing states rather than a single completed event. It is commonly used with time expressions such as quando éramos crianças or antes, when describing background conditions in stories. The nuance between "we had" and "we used to have" depends on whether the action was a continuing state or a recurrent past habit.

Examples:

Nós tínhamos uma casa perto do lago quando éramos crianças. (We had a house near the lake when we were children.)

Antes, tínhamos o costume de ir à praia todo verão. (Before, we used to go to the beach every summer.)

Ela disse que tínhamos dúvidas sobre o plano. (She said that we had doubts about the plan.)

Origin: the verb ter derives from Latin habere, and the imperfect forms, including tínhamos, reflect that heritage in their morphology.