I asked on the Reddit about why Desempenhar wasn’t the opposite of Empenhar. Empenhar means “to make an effort”, and the prefix “des” is like “dis” in english and it usually reverses or negates the meaning of whatever word it’s attached to and makes it into an antonym. So for example, “Fazer” means to make or do, and “Desfazer” mean to take something apart; “Cansar” means to get tired, “Descansar” means to rest, “Ordem” means “Order” and “Desordem” means “Disorder” and so on. So desempenhar looks like it should mean “make no effort” (“Hoje é dia de folga, pá. Vou me desempenhar o dia inteiro!”) but it doesn’t, it means “to perform”.
Why? Is there some sort of mysterious etymological tale to tell here? Same question for their noun forms, empenho (effort) and desempenho (performance).
Joe Desempesci discovers the difference between flammable and Inflammable
As it turns out, it’s just one of those things like Flammable and Inflammable in english, where the prefix just doesn’t really have any effect. A few interesting points came up in the comments
Butt_Roidholds listed some other examples of this sort of thing:
Abrir = open / Desabrir means leave off doing something… hm… I’m not absolutely sure about this one. Abrir can mean “Open the proceedings” – ie, start something, so desabrir meaning cease doing something actually does seem to be an antonym
Obstinado = obstinate / Desobstinado = something like “disoriented” but it’s not very clear – it isn’t defined in Priberam and Infopedia just says “ver desaustinado”. It seems like an odd fish and I won’t be using it!
Inquieto = disquieted / Desinquieto = exactly the same as inquieto! Why does this even exist though? They already have the word “quieto”, so why the double negative?
Aliviar = alleviate / desaliviar = alleviate.
And other users, TheSingingBowl and Vilkav chimed in with
Abrochar = to fasten with a brooch, or to button up / Desabrochar = open or unbutton, can also refer to the opening of a flower. These seem like pretty decent antonyms but the person who suggested them added a laughing emoji so I think it might have to do with the other (rude) meaning of “broche”.
Largar = let go / Deslargar = let go. Yep, definite example.
As for theories about how the words got like this, the most interesting one was from Grenarius who suggested maybe Desempenho came from the word “penhor” which is like “pawn” in the sense of something given as security for a high interest loan, and when you would “se empenhar” you were incurring an obligation which you would then discharge, so desempenha is an antonym of “se empenha” in that sense: you are performing some work to pay off your debt. It’s a minor stretch but not out of the realms of possibility
I went swimming yesterday for the first time since before the age of covid. Since a long time before, in fact. I recorded the workout in my fitness app. Yes, I’ve become one of those people! Anyway, like most things on my phone, it’s in Portuguese so I had to try and figure out what this lot meant. They’re not words I’ve ever needed before. So here’s the scoooooop:
Natação =swimming
Braçada =stroke. “estilo” and even “movimento” can be used instead.
Costas =backstroke
Bruços =breaststroke (aka “de peito”)
Mariposa =butterfly – also called “borboleta” and “golfinho”
Estilo Livre =crawl actually called “crawl” in Brasil and “crol” in portugal, and these seem to be more common names than “Estilo Livre” as far as I can see.
I see the word corno a lot on social media in different contexts so I thought I’d dig into it a bit.
Me so corny
Ordinary, standard meanings are pretty straightforward:
A horn – ie, what a cow has on its head (you’ll also see “chifre” and “galho” especially in relation to a deer’s antlers, but the distinction between horns and antlers seems a little permeable…?)
By extension, various other things that are a bit like horns (antennae, tentacles, bone spurs and so on) will sometimes be referred to as cornos. You’ll also see “corno de abundância” or “corno de Amalteia” for cornucopia, or corno de sapato for shoehorn, for example.
A horn on a car (I’ve never seen this in the wild – buzina is the more usual word – but this definition exists in priberam).
One of the points at either end of a crescent moon.
A kind of plant – careful though, its not what we call corn (that’s milho), but a family of shrubs in the cornacea family.
But when I see it on social media, it usually means one of two things, depending on whether its singular or plural.
When it’s in the singular, it usually means cuckold, either in the original sense of a man whose wife is unfaithful, or the more modern one of someone who enjoys watching his wife be unfaithful. So when you see it online it’s often by the sort of person who would use the word “cuck” as an insult in English. They tend not to be the loveliest people, I’m afraid.
And in the plural, it usually means the face or head – so “um tiro nos cornos” =a bullet in the head, “levou uma pá nos cornos” = he got hit in the face with a shovel, and you’ll see various combinations of levar/ apanhar/ dar + nos cornos meaning various types of damage being inflicted above the neckline. In some cases it’s figurative – if someone loses a war or an argument or a football match, say.
There’s also “passado dos cornos”, gone in the head, meaning maluco or doido.
Espero que um cavalo te dê um coice nos cornos respectfully
So there you go. I hope you have enjoyed this dose of hardcore cornography. I feel like I should set homework for you. Try going in twitter now and searching for the expression “nos cornos”. Browse through a few examples and see if you can work out what the tweeter is trying to imply – whether they’re describing an actual physical injury or just some sort of defeat. Tell me your favourite example in the comments.
Ficar is one of the verbs that can be used in lots of ways, so you’ll often hear it followed by a preposition and the combination of ficar +preposition makes a compound verb that has its own meaning. Some examples for today’s homework. Thanks to Dani Morgenstern for the corrections.
Ficar a (1) = “to stay around” (Não fiquei a assistir à conclusão do discurso)
Ficar a (2) = “to be somewhere” (Slough fica a cerca de 30km de Londres)
Ficar com = “to keep”, “to get” (Fiquei com o livro após o incêndio na biblioteca) – can also be used to mean keeping hold of a feeling (Fico sempre com medo quando ouço aquela canção)
Ficar de = “to commit to” (ele ficou de consertar a bicicleta)
Ficar em = “to stay in” (Fiquei em primeiro lugar até ao final da corrida quando Mo Farah me ultrapassou. Bolas!)
Ficar para (1) = “to be for” (Este livro fica para ti)
Ficar para (2) = “to be delayed” (A reunião fica para a próxima semana)
Ficar por (1) = “to support” (Nas eleições, ele fica sempre pelo partido do Roderick Spode) (This one seems to be pretty rare. Consensus seems to be that “ser por” is better in these kinds of cases. “…é pelo partido…”
Ficar por (2) = “To stand in for” (Não consigo participar na reunião mas a minha colega fica por mim)
Ficar por (3) = “To cost” (O livro fica por 100 €)
Fico por (4) = “To stop” (Hoje ficamos por aqui; preciso de um copo de vinho)
Ficar por + infinitive = “to not be done yet” (O meu trabalho de casa fica por fazer porque sou preguiçoso)
Ficar sem = “To go without” (Ficámos sem papel higiénico durante as primeiras semanas da pandemia porque uns idiotas entraram em pânico e compraram os pacotes todos)
Ficar-se por = “To limit oneself to” (Sendo incapazes de derrotar o governo, os apoiantes do presidente ficaram-se por gamar portáteis e tirar selfies no escritório de Nancy Pelosi)
I’ve been watching the TV adaptation of Mário Zambujal’s novel, A Crónica dos Bons Malandros (the chronicles of the good… scoundrels…? hmm… it doesn’t sound as good in english though does it?), about a bunch of chancers who set out to steal some valuable jewels from the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian. It’s on RTP1 and it has portuguese subtitles which helps when the dialogue is fast (most of the time) but even so, it’s really challenging. Lots of slang, lots of period detail from the early eighties. Here are a few words and phrases that I collected along the way. It’s pretty far from being a full glossary, but they were the things that caught my intetrest
Os Bons Malandros – the Portuguese Ocean’s Eleven
A trouxe-mouxe
In a disorderly manner, helter skelter
Isso são pilha-galinhas. Vamos embora
When the gang get arrested early in the series, the cops get a call on the radio a abiut a more serious crime and so they decide to let them go because they are just “pilha-galinhas”: small-fry, literally chicken thieves.
Gamar
To steal something in a sneaky way. Nick it, pinch it, ‘ave it away.
Enxame
A swarm of bees. You can’t really miss this one because when they release it there are bees everywhere
Prateleira
Usually means shelf but it comes up in a slightly surprising context. According to Priberam it can also mean “Os seios”
Isto é uma cena muito política, ‘tás a ver? Cunhas
Cunhas just means wedges, and when people use it like this it’s meant to convey that the person has contacts who can help them get a foot in the door. In other words, it’s a gripe about being treated unfavourably by insiders making way for their friends.
Carlinhos dança que se desunha
Literally “desunhar” is what it sounds like: unhas are nails, as in fingernails, so des-unhar might literally mean to remove someone’s claws or nails, but more likely, when used as a pronomial verb with se, as in the example, it means working so hard that your nails come off. So Carlos dances a lot, puts everything into it. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s good (although he seems to be that too!)
Trigo limpo, farinha Amparo
This one comes from an old advertising slogan for Amparo, a brand name of a kind of wheat meal popular in the seventies and eighties. I think when it’s used in the show he’s using it to mean it’s all good, nothing to worry about.
Pentelho
A public hair – or by extension any trivial, insignificant thing
Borla
Literally means a tassel, but can also mean a freebie. I’m not sure how informal this is though: the character who says it is asking a prostitute if she’ll “fazer uma borla” and I think he’s asking for a freebie as a regular customer. Whether you can use the same expression when asking your friend to fix your laptop for free, I don’t know. Caveat emptor.
“És anti-religiosa?” / “Nao, sou anti-mirones”
Said by Zinita when o doutor turns the statue of Jesus to face the wall. A mirone is a rubbernecker, peeping tom, lookie-loo, that kind of thing
Alcunha
This one comes up a few times and it means nickname
The nose, mouth area of an animal – the snout or the muzzle, so when the guy in the prison yard says he’s going to esmagar Flávio’s fuça he means he’s going to give him what PG Wodehouse would call “a poke in the snoot”
Olarila
Something like “oh yes indeed” although I don’t think the justiceiro means it when he says this to the fascist banana seller because in the next line he reminds him that his father is…
A gritar bravos ao Botas no cemitério do Tarrafal
Tarrafal was a concentration camp in Cabo Verde where the Estado Novo kept its political prisoners, so if someone was shouting bravo there they were probably a collaborator or a lickspittle of some kind. I’m not sure who or what Botas was – I can’t find a reference to him in any of the pages I’ve seen.
Bófia
The cops, the fuzz
Futre
Is just the name of a footballer. You probably already know gthat but I’m a bit slow on the uptake. I think the joke is that they’ve just heard about the robbery on the news and they ask Justiceiro his opinion but he’s distracted by another story, about the footie.
Engavetar
This one is pretty straightforward and just means to put something in a drawer (Gavete), but can also be used the way we might talk about “shelving” something – just put it aside and ignore it. In episode 6 there’s a scene where the police officer who has arrested Bitoque asks him if he will “engavetar” his grandmother and he’s using it in another sense, namely, to put someone in jail. So he just wants him to give them information about her crimes.
Defendo que Camarate foi um atentado
This comes during a really confusing scene half way through the last episode where there’s been a double cross, and nobody know where the jewels are or what’s going on, and people are pretending not to be able to understand each other’s accents and slinging around insults. Barbosa accuses his son in law of being an esquerdalha (leftist) and he replies that “I support the theory that the Camarate Case was an act of terrorism”. I’m not quite sure how this situates him on the political map TBH. The Camarate Case was a plane crash in the Camarate district outside of Lisbon in 1980. the then prime minister, Franciso Sá Carneiro and his finance minister, Adelino Amaro da Costa were both among the dead. This was shortly after the Carnation Revolution and there was a lot of shady stuff going on. Some think he was killed by the CIA because he was going to stop America from using the Açores as an air base, (that was a huge deal at that stage of the cold war), but I’ve also spent an awkward taxi ride listening to the taxista rant about how it was that bastard Mario Soares who had him killed. Soares was in the Partido Socialista whereas Sá Carneiro was in the Partido Social Democrata. You can read more about it here (Portuguese) or here (English). Or just ask a taxista.
Just to demonstrate the incredible educational potential of social media, how else would I have learned this new word?
Dear Mark Zuckerberg,
The new name for Facebook, Meta, can be misunderstood in Portuguese, because it can sound like "Stick it" with the inevitable idea of sticking something up the ass.
I suggest a simple letter change to avoid this misunderstanding: MEITA.
I’ve been looking at words related to money and I’ve put together some short paragraphs that use them in context
This has absolutely nothing to do with the text, I just like puns, OK?
Os meus vizinhos oferecem alvíssaras (a reward) a quem forneça informações sobre o seu cão que desapareceu no domingo passado.
O governo já aumentou os impostos (taxes) apesar de ter prometido não agravar a carga fiscal (tax burden).
O meu contabilista (accountant) pratica honorários (professional fee) muito altos mas vale a pena
Além da propina (tuition fee) que pagava à universidade tinha de pagar uma joia (subscription fee) ao clube Marxista e manter a minha quota (periodic membership fee) em dia. Caso contrário, eu ficaria “cancelado”.
O meu avô recebe dividendos (dividends – not a hard one to guess, that!) modestos* cada ano em resultado dos seus investimentos (investments – another easy one!) . Comprou um por cento das ações (stocks. I’ve seen “títulos” and “papéis” used in this context. See here for example) duma empresa chamada “Apple” em 1978 e os lucros (profits) do seu capital cobrem as despesas (expenses) da sua humilde mansão numa pequena ilha privada no mar das Caraíbas.
A minha filha ganha (earns) bem com o seu serviço de ama mas vive connosco sem pagar renda (rent free: renda can also mean “income” in other contexts as well as rent). É rica. Penso em pedir-lhe um empréstimo (loan) mas a taxa (rate) de juros (interest) que ela aplica é bastante alta.
Depois de receber uma indemnização (compensation) do meu empregador, fui ao banco fazer um depósito (deposit, obviously) e depois à tasca praticar o levantamento do copo.
*This useage of “modesto” to describe something as small and unshowy, is not actually given in the dictionary but seems to be used as in English alongside the more normal use of modest to mean a person who is not boastful.
I keep seeing this word on Twitter. Priberam says:
Um Chalupa a Fazer Chalupices, Ontem
cha·lu·pa (francês chaloupe)
nome feminino
1. [Náutica] Embarcação de um só mastro para cabotagem.
2. [Náutica] Barco de vela e remos.
3. [Jogos] Conjunto das cartas de maior valor no jogo do voltarete.
4. [Informal] [Vestuário] Bota grosseira. (Mais usado no plural.)
adjectivo de dois géneros e nome de dois géneros
5. [Portugal, Informal, Depreciativo] Que ou quem perdeu a razão ou tem distúrbios mentais (ex.: o velho já estava chalupa; estes chalupas só dizem disparates). = ADOIDADO, AMALUCADO, LOUCO, MALUCO
"chalupa", in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa [em linha], 2008-2021 [consultado em 29-09-2021]
I think the fifth definition is the key one: basically, it’s a nutcase, a crank, a wingnut. It’s been used a lot in relation to people who think the vaccine is going to turn them into a gay frog, or whatever. I don’t really understand how it came to mean that though, given that the standard meanings all seem completely unrelated. Hi ho. It’s definitely worth putting in the word-hoard though, if you are planning to be on social media.
If there’s one thing Portugal is not, it’s Texas. Portugal is Portugal, Texas is Texas. How many times must I repeat this, people?
While Texas prides itself on everything being bigger there, european portuguese uses a lot of diminutive endings “inho” and “inha”, at least in conversational use. This doesn’t usually mean the thing they’re talking about is actually small (although it might be), it’s just a way of speaking, and it makes the sentence sound more natural and polished. The opposite phenomenon, augmentative endings, are rarer and the way they are formed is more variable than the diminutive, so they need a little more work to remember. So… let’s Texanise our Portuguese for a bit and look at this list “(from “A Actualidade em Português”)
Where the word is highlighted in red, the augmented form has changed gender from feminine to masculine, and blue highlighting indicates the opposite. Predictably, the former is more common than the latter.
Standard
Translation
Augmented
Translation
Casa
House
Casarão
Big house
Rocha
Rock
Rochedo
Big rock
Barulho
Noise
Barulhão
Big noise*
Voz
Voice
Vozeirão
(Someone who has a) loud voice
Porta
Door
Portão
Big door, main door of a building
Sala
Room
Salão
Big room especially in a commercial space – eg, dance hall or showroom
Faca
Knife
Facalhão/Facão**
Big knife, machete
Camisola
Jumper
Camisolão
Big jumper
Homem
Man
Homenzarrão
Large man
Mulher
Woman
Mulherona
Large woman
Boca
Mouth
Boqueirão
Large mouth (has several geographical uses – eg a river mouth, hole in the ground, gap between mountains)
Prato
Plate
Pratalhão
Big plate, dish
Chuva
Rain
Chuvada
Downpour
Cadeira
Chair
Cadeirão
Big chair
Copo
Drinking glass
Copão
Big drinking glass
Peito
Chest
Peitaça/Peitaço***
Big/strong chest
Sábio
Wise person
Sabichão****
Great, wise one
Pata
Paw, hoof, animal foot
Patorra
Big paw, big foot
Cão
Dog
Cãozarrão
Big dog
Rapaz
Boy
Rapagão/Rapazão
Chonky Boi, absolute unit
*=This one is in the book but not in Priberam so I guess not standard.
**=Faca has two forms, one of which stays feminine and the other switches to masculine. The first is the one given in the book, but the second is definitely used and is given in priberam
***=Peito has two forms, one feminine and one masculine. Despite what you might think, that’s not because one is used for a woman’s chest and one for a man’s; they’re synonyms. Peitaça is more common and can be used for a man’s swole pecs without implying he has a nice rack, and that makes it interesting because it’s the only example where the supersizing results in a word going from masculine to feminine. Neither of them seems particularly common though, and in fact if you google it you’ll mostly find brazilian websites with ornate breastplates, which isn’t a meaning given in Priberam so I guess it must be specific to the Brazilian variant
Writing texts in the WritestreakPT subreddit has been really interesting. That’s where all these corrections have been coming from on this blog lately, and the people who hang out there correcting texts are really nice. It’s good when the corrections show you new words and are an education in themselves, and today has produced some.really interesting new words so I thought I’d share the results of my digging. These are all taken from the comments under “Os Adolescentes”
“Não vou ser assim tão picuinhas aqui”. I’m not going to be so fussy here. Picuinhas is an odd looking word. It almost looks like it wants a q in place of the c. And more to the point, why is it an adjective that apparently always ends in -as, even when the noun it’s referring to is singular and masculine? Priberam defines it as “Quem é exageradamente minucioso, quem dá muito importância a pormenores”. So I almost translated it as pedantic, but “pedante” already exists and I think fussy or picky is probably nearer the mark.
“O meu pelouro são as vírgulas”. My area of responsibility is commas. I assumed “pelouro” must be like “pet peeve” but it’s not. A Pelouro is a branch of the municipal government of the responsibility of an individual Councillor, so by extension if someone says “O meu pelouro é (whatever)” they’re saying that’s their department: the thing they care about, and they make it their business to keep an eye on it.
I’m not sure what a pet peeve is. “Pet hate”, if you’re interested, is “Ódio de estimação”, which is exactly what you’d expect since a pet is an animal de estimação.
I asked about the Pelouro example. It is, as she said, “um pouco rebuscado” that they use local council departments as a way of denoting personal areas of responsibility. I only know “rebuscado” as meaning “far-fetched” when describing a book, say, but it has other meanings and the sense seems to be slightly different here. It’s a bit of a stretch; it’s a bit laboured.
I was advised to maybe check up on a facebook group called “Tesourinhos das Autárquicas” (clippings from the local elections) to get a flavour of what goes on in Portuguese local democracy. It’s a good way of getting some exposure to the language, culture and politics of the country, which can only be a good thing.
Finally, I said (in English) “I can feel a blog post coming on”, and that, apparently is “Cheira-me que vem aí uma publicação do blog”. It smells like there is a blog post coming. Smells? What are you implying? 🤔
Luso 