I was intrigued by this dialogue in the audiobook I’m listening to, “Filho de Mil Homens” It’s a boy asking about his dad.
O António perguntava “E era parecido comigo?”
Ela dizia “Cara de um, focinho do outro”. Riam-se, puxava-lhe pelo nariz, beijava-o na testa”
Cara de um, focinho do outro: Face of one, snout of the other?
What’s going on? I thought at first that the second person was saying “you have the face of one parent and the nose of the other” , but that didnt seem right, and sure enough, after some thought, I realised they were saying “You’re exactly like your dad”. The cara (face) of the dad is like the focinho (literally an animal snout, but colloquially, a face) of the child.
I like this expression, it’s really cute!
There’s a similar expression someone told me about while I was asking about this: “Cuspido e escarrado” – literally “spat and spat”. Wait, the portuguese have two words for spitting? Apparently, yes, but we have expectorate, gob, hawk and flob, so that’s no surprise.
But why? Why, if you were trying to come up with an expression meaning “exactly the same as someone”, would you bring gobbing into the equation?
In many ways, it’s like the English expression “Spitting Image”, or “Spit and Image”, which are corruptions of “Spirit and image”. Cuspido e escarrado doesn’t imply that saliva makes you resemble another person, it’s a corruption of “esculpido em carrara” – Sculpted in Marble.
Luso 