Tag: bater

Posted in English

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Bater

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I saw a bad translation in a vocabulary app: embater =to hit. Well, why is it not just bater? Bater seems to be one of those words that has been used as a rooot to make other verbs, and embater can mean hit if you want to say something like “The car hit a tree”, but it’s more like a collision than a punch. The way it works is…

Bater = To Strike, Beat, Hit. The vanilla version. How you translate it depends on the pronoun, to a certain extent.

Embater = Collide, crash

Abater = Slaughter, cull

Combater = Combat, counteract

There’s also esbater (to blur) and debater (to debate) but I don’t think those are part of the same family since they aren’t as violent.

I seem to write a lot about Bater. I wrote a whole post on it a while ago and… Have I posted this meme already? I feel like I must have. It’s pretty old and there are loads of copies so I don’t know who to attribute it to.

Posted in English

It’s Time To Master “Bater”

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I keep seeing constructions like “bater mal” and “bater certo”, and couldn’t quite see why “bater” was being used. I asked and (after a brief kerfuffle with some brazilians who tried to tell me that it disn’t exist and made no sense) found out that it is an informal expression. Bater is the verb used for the beating of a heart or the ticking of a clock, and if it starts going wrong that’s bad, so if someone “bate mal” after – say – a blow to the head, he’s not quite himself. You can also “bater bem” (being in good form) and things can “bater certo” (be exact, precise, spot on).

There’s an example of Bater Mal near the beginning of this song by the Greatest Band Ever