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PORTUGUESE · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

matar.

to kill (to cause to die)

5 characters2 syllables approx.Português language

Meaning & usage

verb/maˈta(ʁ)/Brazil[maˈta(h)]Brazil/maˈta(ɾ)/São-Paulo/maˈta(ʁ)/Rio-de-Janeiro
  1. to kill (to cause to die)

    transitive
    Mataram-no a tiros!
    A geada matará a plantação.
  2. to kill; to eradicate; to destroy

    figuratively · transitive
    Matou-lhe as esperanças
  3. to kill (to cause extreme pain, distress or exhaustion in)

    figuratively · informal · transitive
    Minhas pernas estão me matando
    Essas palavras matam!
  4. to kill (to write a story that conveys the death of)

    transitive
    Hobbes matara o positivismo acerca da revolução.
  5. to satisfy, to satiate, to quench (to fulfil an emotional or physiological need)

    figuratively · transitive
    Antes de matar meu desejo de caminhar, preciso matar minha sede.
  6. to commit suicide

    reflexive
    Ela matou-se com a faca.
  7. to break one's back (to make a great effort)

    figuratively · reflexive
    O homem se matava para sustentar a família.
  8. to spend [a period of time] doing unimportant things

    colloquial · transitive
    A escola ficou fechada hoje; tive o dia inteiro para matar.
  9. to skip (not to be present in a class)

    Brazil · slang · transitive
    Os alunos mataram a aula de geografia.
  10. to solve (to find the solution to a mystery)

    informal · transitive
    Finalmente matei a charada.
  11. to consume something entirely (especially an alcoholic drink); to knock down

    Brazil · slang · transitive
    Matamos uns cascos para relaxar.
  12. to stop a moving ball

    transitive
    Passei de longe para o atacante, que matou a bola no peito.
  13. to pocket (to cause a ball to go into one of the pockets of the table)

    transitive
    Ela sempre mata duas ou três bolas na primeira tacada.
Where this word comes from

From Old Galician-Portuguese matar, probably from Latin mactāre (through Vulgar Latin *mattāre). The development of -ct- would be irregular, however. Hence possibly derived from or influenced by Late Latin mattus (“drunk, intoxicated”), related to madidus. Another possibility is an influence by Arabic مَاتَ (māta, “to die”). The short past participle is derived from Latin morīre, an unrelated verb that means "to die."

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.