As usual, I’m reading 12 books at once and consequently not getting through any of them very quickly but here’s another nice expression I found today in a book I’ve been reading for a disgracefully long time.
The meaning is pretty obvious from the context. “Dar de caras com…” means to run into someone unexpectedly. It’s similar to “come face to face with” in English but seems to be slanted in the direction of an unexpected encounter rather than being any situation where you’re confronting someone.
While researching, I came across a couple of other dar/cara pairings with slightly different meanings so I’ll get those down in the same blog post just to keep my thoughts organised.
Dar a cara means to take responsibility. I guess the nearest English equivalent would be “face up to”. Linguee gives a few examples, so here’s one. “A União Europeia precisa de dar a cara aos seus desafios”.
Dar com a cara na porta is like “bater com o nariz na porta”. The idea is that you’ve gone to a shop and found it’s closed so instead of the door opening for you, you smack into the glass, face first. I think more figuratively it can describe any other situation where you ask for something and find that there’s no chance whatsoever.
I’ve tried to take these examples from European portuguese. I found a few examples of some of these being used in slightly different ways by Brazilians but let’s keep it simple eh?
Luso 