A black and white illustration of Freddie Mercury in a celebratory pose with 'sextou!!!!!' text overlay.

Sextou

2015Catchphrase / hashtagactive

Published March 24, 2026

Also known as: Fridayed · #Sextou · TGIF brasileiro

Sextou is a Brazilian Portuguese slang term and hashtag used to celebrate the arrival of Friday, functioning as the Brazilian equivalent of TGIF. Born from a 2015 forró song by the group Forró da Pegação, the expression turned the noun "sexta" (Friday) into a verb, roughly translating to "Fridayed"1. The term gained international attention in 2018 when English-speaking Instagram users misinterpreted #sextou as "sex to u" and flooded the hashtag with pornographic content, prompting Instagram to block it3.

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Overview

Sextou, a neologism created by treating the Portuguese word for Friday, "sexta-feira" (often shortened to just "sexta"), as a verb. The suffix "-ou" mirrors the third-person past tense conjugation for "-ar" verbs in Portuguese, making "sextou" literally translate to something like "it Fridayed"1. In practice, Brazilians use the word every Friday to announce that the weekend is here and it's time to relax or party5.

The expression shows up everywhere in Brazilian internet culture. People drop it in Instagram captions, TikTok videos, Twitter posts, and workplace group chats the moment Friday hits. It's commonly paired with images or clips of people dancing, leaving work, or raising drinks4.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (original song), Instagram (hashtag spread)
Key People
Forró da Pegação, Israel Novaes and Wesley Safadão
Date
2015

The linguistic roots of sextou trace back to a process called verbification, where a noun gets turned into a verb. In Portuguese, "sexta-feira" means Friday (literally "sixth day"), and Brazilians routinely shorten it to "sexta." By adding the "-ou" past tense suffix, the word transforms into a playful declaration that Friday has arrived2.

The term was popularized through music. On March 16, 2015, the Brazilian forró group Forró da Pegação released a music video for their song "Sextou" on YouTube4. The song follows a worker grinding through the week until he can finally gather his friends to party on Friday. The video picked up 3.4 million views over the following eight years4.

A major boost came on October 28, 2015, when artists Israel Novaes and Wesley Safadão released a cover version of the song, spreading the term even further across Brazil4.

How It Spread

After the song took off, #sextou quickly became one of Brazil's most-used Friday hashtags. The tag accumulated over 9.2 million posts on Instagram as of March 20234. Every Friday, Brazilian social media fills up with sextou-themed content, from memes featuring TV hosts to clips of people dancing at their desks.

The Brazilian TV channel SBT used the term in a Facebook meme posted on April 27, 2018, showing a TV host with overlay text reading "I'm thanking God because today is Friday"4.

On TikTok, the hashtag #sextou reached 5 billion views. A TikTok by @luiscunha posted on April 22, 2022, featured a character dancing with the text "Friday coming while I'm at work" and pulled 202,700 plays4. Brazilian football legend Ronaldinho also jumped in, posting a sextou TikTok on July 1, 2022, that hit 36 million plays and 2.2 million likes4.

The term's most infamous moment came in late August 2018. English-speaking Instagram users, unfamiliar with Portuguese, read #sextou as "sex to u" and began using it to post erotic and pornographic content1. The misunderstanding spread fast enough that Instagram stepped in. On September 5, 2018, the platform blocked the hashtag entirely, making it unsearchable3. Instagram released a statement (translated from Portuguese): "We thank our community for bringing the problem with the hashtag #sextou to our attention. Posts with this hashtag have been limited while we take appropriate action"3.

The incident became a story in itself. Brazilian outlet G1 covered the controversy, and the collision between Brazilian Friday celebrations and English-language adult content became a running joke in both language communities3. The hashtag was eventually restored, though the "sex to u" misreading became part of sextou's lore5.

Frequently Asked Questions