Tag: twitter

Posted in English

Arcaboiço

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Ooh, well I haven’t done a post about cool stuff words found on twitter for a while, but here’s one

It’s such an unusual-looking word, I wondered if it was a joke word – maybe 3 words stuck together for effect or something – but it’s not.

Here’s what Priberam has to say about it

arcaboiço

(ar·ca·boi·ço)


nome masculino

1. Conjunto dos ossos de um vertebrado. = OSSATURA

2. Estrutura óssea do peito. = TÓRAX

3. [Por extensão] Constituição física.

4. [Técnica] Estrutura de madeira de uma construção. = ARMAÇÃO, MADEIRAMENTO

5. Traçado inicial de algo. = DELINEAMENTO, ESBOÇO

6. [Figurado] Capacidade, envergadura (ex.: o técnico não tem arcaboiço para substituir o treinador).

“arcaboiço”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa [em linha], 2008-2023, https://dicionario.priberam.org/arcaboi%C3%A7o.

So it’s like “bone structure”, but focused on bodily articulation, as distinct from, say, facial bone structure. Nice!

Posted in English

As Someone…

Posted on by Colin Lusk

…who likes to prance about pretending to be a scientist, even though my degrees are in barely, tangentially scientific subjects, I enjoy reading this twitter account. It’s Brazilian, so I have to keep my wits about me, but the memes are actually pretty funny, even if about one in ten go completely over my head. And as a bonus, I get familiar with sciencey words without having to torture myself by working through a memrise deck of chemistry terminology or whatever.

Posted in English

Digital Nobhead

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I quite enjoyed the roasting this digital nomad bro got after posting this rant about how old cities are old, and there’s a lack of sausages in Lisbon but at least they speak good English.

Posted in English

A Crazy-Ass Moment

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this account in here before but it really is a great source of minor historical weirdnesses if you are a fan of Portuguese History. I mean, this for example.

Posted in English

Coming Out of the Armário

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’ve been posting on twitter a lot today. I’m starting to feel a bit icky about my twitter identity though. I chose the assumed name of a Portuguese explorer, Pedro Álvares Cabral, because I wanted to just post as if I were Portuguese, but I’ve been feeling a bit off about it. I think this has really come to a head when discussing Ukraine. There are a lot of fake news bots out there pretending to be Brazilian or portuguese or whatever and talking shite about the war. I like a bit of twitter rough and tumble as much as the next idiot, so I will occasionally challenge these accounts but of course doing that while pretending to be a native of Portugal feels a bit disingenuous and the fact that I also make a lot of the kinds of mistakes only a foreigner would make means they can make the same charge back at me, pretending to think I am on the payroll of MI6 or whatever. Which I am, obviously, but they don’t know that.

So I’ve announced that I’m planning to change my identity to something that is more open about my origins (but still anonymous) so people have a better idea of where I’m coming from.

Now I just need to come up with a good alias…

🧵 👇

Posted in English

Dorkest Peru

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Like all romance language nerds, whatever my shortcomings as a pub quiz competitor, I am definitely going to come through if the question is “Which two countries have the same name as a bird commonly eaten at Christmas?” Yesterday, in response to a tweet of mine about covid, someone said “Calma que o perú é para o Natal…” and although I understood the words as meaning “keep calm because turkey is for Christmas”, I didn’t really get what he was driving at. I asked the Missus about it and she reckons he’s just saying “there’s no point worrying about the future” or something along those lines. Don’t worry about it till it happens. OK, that makes sense.

Posted in English

Abreijos

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I saw someone on Twitter signing off a tweet with “abreijos” which is obviously a mixture of “beijos” (kisses) and “abraços” (hugs). I love it! I did a post a few years ago about equivalents of “frenemy“, and in general I am very pro-splicing, but this was a new one on me.

Looking around for other examples, I found plenty, including these ladies who were less impressed with the idea of these frankenwords…

Abreijos - screenshot from Twitter

But woah, there’s a bonus one in there: namorido, which looks like a mix of “namorado” (boyfriend) and “marido” (husband). Seems to just mean a long-term, live-in boyfriend who hasn’t actually bothered with the whole ring thing. I asked about it on reddit and everyone agrees it’s a neologism from Brazil. True, it looks like everyone using Namorido on twatter is Brazilian, but Abreijos is used widely by Portuguese tweeps, so I am definitely going to pull that one out when I get an opportunity.

Posted in English

Arguing Again

Posted on by Colin Lusk

One of the annoying things about being on twitter in Portuguese mode is that I often see things in English I want to reply to but I don’t want to break character and can’t be bothered logging into my normal account. Solution: I just reply in Portuguese, knowing full well that the person won’t understand.

I upbraided someone for a pet peeve of mine: posting made up Orwell quotes. I mean, if you are going to post a bold quite about the importance of truth in a world of fake news, at least take the time to find out if it’s a fake quote.

The guy took umbrage, told me I should “speak English” and said I was showing my stupidity. So I replied with…

Childish? Yes, but I’m calling it homework so it’s allowed.