Often purchased from street carts, this snack is made of tapioca flour toasted until it forms a flat, round shape, filled with sweet or savory ingredients, and then folded in half. Though English speakers might think of tapioca as the dense balls found in pudding and bubble tea, the term can refer to something entirely different in Brazil. Another good match for this word (albeit in Spanish) is cariño. This all-purpose term of endearment originated in northern Brazil and might be translated in some instances as the slang term boo.
You can also “have” xodó for someone when you have soft spot for them. A pet could be a xodó too (especially if it’s enjoying cafuné). Your xodó is your sweetheart, in a way that applies both to your significant other and also someone you have a special closeness with, such as a grandparent. Brazilians generally serve farofa alongside other foods at a traditional barbecue, called a churrasco.
This dish consists of manioc flour toasted in butter, and usually mixed with finely chopped ingredients like bacon, eggs, or bananas. farofaĪ traditional Brazilian feast will come with a side of farofa. This affectionate action can be applied to lovers and pets alike, as can the term chamego, which wraps up the senses of intimacy, infatuation, and cuddling, all in one term. “The act of caressing or tenderly running fingers through a loved one’s hair” is a mouthful mercifully avoided in Brazil with the term cafuné. Perhaps the origin of the romantic image some of us have of Brazil is found within the Portuguese language. One famous move called the “Shark Attack” involves players spiking the volleyball over the net with one foot. This sport rose to popularity in the 1960s on the beaches of Copacabana.
It differs from nostalgia in that one can feel saudade for something that might never have happened, whereas nostalgia is “a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.” futevôleiīrazilians have inventively portmanteau’d the sports of volleyball and soccer together to create futevôlei, “footvolley,” or beach volleyball played without hands. Portuguese scholar Aubrey Bell attempts to distill this complex concept in his 1912 book In Portugal, describing saudade as “a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present.”īell continues to say that saudade is “not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.” Saudade can more casually be used to say that you miss someone or something, even if you’ll see that person or thing in the near future. A recurring theme in Portuguese and Brazilian literature, saudade evokes a sense of loneliness and incompleteness. This untranslatable Portuguese term refers to a melancholic longing or yearning. Here are some of our favorite words from the Portuguese language. At those times, we turn to other languages, celebrating them for the concepts we wish we could express so easily in English. You can use a * as a wildcard.Sometimes we’re at a loss for words, not because we’re speechless, but because no English term lends itself to the situation (or snack) at hand. This dictionary database is from the freeware multilingual programĪlso see travlang's English-Portuguese Dictionary. We offer: Portuguese - English On-line Dictionary - Discount Hotel rooms, cheap flights and car rental bookings searchs - plus Language Resources and more We offer: On-line Translating Dictionaries - Discount Hotel rooms, cheap flights and car rental bookings searchs - plus Language Resources and more