venceste

Venceste is a conjugated form of the Portuguese verb vencer. It is the second-person singular form in the pretérito perfeito (preterite) of the indicative mood, meaning that the subject you performed the action in the past, as in “you defeated” or “you won.”

The form is most commonly used in European Portuguese, where the pronoun tu is used with venceste in informal speech and writing. In Brazilian Portuguese, speakers typically rely on você venceu, though tu venceste can appear in dialectal or literary contexts that preserve the informal tu form.

Form and morphology: venceste is derived from the verb vencer (to defeat, to win). The stem venc- takes the ending -este to indicate the second-person singular past tense in the pretérito perfeito.

Etymology: vencer comes from Latin vincere, via the Romance languages that evolved into modern Portuguese. The preterite venceste reflects the regular development of Latin’s various past tenses into contemporary Portuguese conjugations.

Example usage: Tu venceste o adversário na final, expressing a completed action in the past. For contrast, the third-person singular past is ele venceu, and the present second-person form is tu vences.

Related topics include the verb vencer, the pretérito perfeito tense in Portuguese, and the regional variation between European and Brazilian Portuguese usages.