The verb pôr is a common, useful verb in Portuguese, both Brazilian and European. Pôr means ‘to put or place,’ and in it’s reflexive form, pôr-se means to become.

Though useful, the verb is highly irregular, and many forms of the verb are on the difficult side for beginner speakers to pronounce, since they involve much nasalization.

This is the present tense conjugation of the verb:

Eu ponho, Você põe, Nos pomos, Vocês põem

To my mind, this is unnecessarily difficult for the beginner Portuguese learner. The irregular verbs ir, ter, ser, and estar are absolutely necessary, but pôr is avoidable. It seems as though even Brazilians avoid this verb like the plague, except in the present tense Eu and Você forms.

Much easier is to use the -ar verb colocar, which means exactly the same thing: ‘to put or place.’ It is just way easier for a beginner to conjugate a simple -ar verb naturally than to wrestle with the myriad irregular forms of pôr, particularly in the past tenses. Colocar is one of those verbs ending in -car that change in some forms to include a ‘q’ such as eu coloquei i put, but this is hardly as complex as eu pus i put which follows no pattern whatsoever.


Another option, this one more colloquial, is botar to put. Botar is slightly different and is used for specific purposes in addition to the general idea of placement, including ‘putting on’ clothing or shoes, for example.

On form of pôr that is extremely common is posto, the past participled meaning placed. This form is even a common noun with many uses; gas station, for example, is posto de gasolina.