Idioms and proverbs

Every language has a layer that cannot be translated word for word. Ficar a ver navios has nothing to do with ships, nor engolir sapos with amphibians: these are idioms, fixed strings whose overall meaning does not follow from the sum of their parts. Alongside them run the proverbs — short, self-contained and often rhymed sentences that condense a moral or practical judgement passed down from one generation to the next. Together they make up what is usually called a language’s popular wisdom.

Proverb, idiom, set phrase

It helps to distinguish three things that everyday speech runs together. The proverb (also ditado, adágio, rifão) is a complete, autonomous statement asserting a general truth: Águas passadas não movem moinhos, “water that has gone by no longer turns the mill.” The idiom (expressão idiomática) is a fragment that slots into a sentence and behaves as a single lexical block: fazer das tripas coração, estar com os azeites. The set phrase (frase feita) is a formula worn smooth by use, without the sententious weight of the proverb: à grande e à francesa. The boundaries are porous, but a useful test is this: the proverb advises, the idiom merely means.

Where they come from

Most of this stock arises from the shared experience of a community, and its images reveal the world that produced it. Four veins are especially rich in Portuguese.

From rural life comes a great part of the proverbs: Em abril, águas mil (“a thousand waters in April”); Grão a grão enche a galinha o papo (“grain by grain the hen fills her crop”); Quem semeia ventos colhe tempestades (“who sows winds reaps storms”). From the sea and seafaring — the natural inheritance of a people turned towards the Atlantic — come images such as ir por água abaixo (“to go down with the water,” i.e. to fall through) or navegar em mar alto (“to sail the high seas”). Religion sowed the language with biblical and liturgical references: chorar como uma Madalena (“to weep like a Magdalene”). And history left expressions whose origin is lost to the ordinary speaker but which tradition keeps reconstructing.

The famous ficar a ver navios — to come off badly, to be left empty-handed — is popularly tied to the people who are said to have waited in vain on the banks of the Tagus for the return of King Sebastião after the disaster of Alcácer-Quibir (1578). It is a seductive and much-repeated etymology, but, as with so many expressions, scholars caution that such reconstructions are almost always later inventions and hard to prove.

A small repertoire

Idiom	Literal sense	Meaning
engolir sapos	swallow toads	to put up with slights without reacting
fazer das tripas coração	make a heart out of guts	to make a supreme effort
estar com os azeites	be with the oils	to be cross, in a bad mood
pôr o pé na argola	put one’s foot in the ring	to make a serious blunder
ficar a ver navios	be left watching ships	to be cheated, left with nothing
ficar de mãos a abanar	be left with hands waving	to be left empty-handed

Notice that many of these images are opaque: speakers use them without noticing the underlying metaphor, just as they say à toa (“aimlessly”) or a torto e a direito (“left and right”) without analysing the words. It is this wearing-down that separates an idiom from a simple living metaphor.

The shape of proverbs

A proverb is not only content: it is also form. It tends to be short, symmetrical and memorable, and it draws on devices that help it lodge in the memory — rhyme, parallelism, alliteration, a binary rhythm. Hence its durability: society changes, but the mould survives.

Others compress a whole code of common sense into a single line: Mais vale um pássaro na mão que dois a voar (“a bird in the hand is worth two in flight”); Em casa de ferreiro, espeto de pau (“in the blacksmith’s house, a wooden spit” — the expected thing is missing); Cão que ladra não morde (“a barking dog does not bite”); Quem tem boca vai a Roma (“whoever has a mouth gets to Rome” — ask, and you will find your way anywhere).

Variation across varieties

Much of this fund is common to the whole of the language, since it predates the Atlantic expansion. But each variety also developed its own, and some expressions diverge in wording or in imagery.

Why they matter

Idioms and proverbs are at once an archive and an obstacle. An archive, because they preserve, in fossilised form, trades, beliefs and events that would otherwise be lost. An obstacle, because they are the last stage a learner of a foreign language masters: one may know all the grammar and still be left a ver navios before a set phrase. To command them is a sign of having moved from knowing a language to belonging to a culture.