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Portuguese

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Wiktionary
Portuguese edition of Wiktionary

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Portuguese português.

Pronunciation

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European Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese

Adjective

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Portuguese (comparative more Portuguese, superlative most Portuguese)

  1. Of or pertaining to Portugal.
    Portuguese borders
    • 1973, Roger Parkinson, The Peninsular War, page 104:
      The British army had already moved over the border and the commander had established his HQ high in the central Portuguese mountains at Viseu.
  2. Of or pertaining to the people of Portugal or their culture.
    Hypernym: European
    Portuguese cuisines
    • 1887, George Brown Goode, The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, section IV, page 33:
      In San Diego County there is but one Portuguese fisherman, as is also the case in Los Angeles, the county immediately adjoining.
  3. Of or pertaining to the Portuguese language.
    Hypernym: Romance
    Portuguese verbs
    • 1981, Milton Mariano Azevedo, A Contrastive Phonology of Portuguese and English, page 31:
      The latter feature indicates that a Portuguese consonant cannot constitute the nucleus of a syllable.

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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Noun

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Portuguese (plural Portuguese or (archaic) Portugueses)

  1. (chiefly in the plural) A person native to, or living in, Portugal.
    • 1897, Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous:
      […] but so close lay the boats that even single hooks snarled, and Harvey found himself in hot argument with a gentle, hairy Newfoundlander on one side and a howling Portuguese on the other.
    • 1920, Paulus Edward Pieris, Ceylon and the Portuguese, 1505-1658, page 184:
      With a view to securing its more efficient working, a Portuguese was placed in charge of the entire department as Vidane.
    • 2000, René Chartrand, Bill Younghusband, The Portuguese Army of the Napoleonic Wars, volume 1, page 23:
      Beresford required all materials for coatees, waistcoats and pantaloons to be sent out unmade, as the Portuguese were perfectly capable of making the suits up properly after delivery.
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Portuguese.

Usage notes

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As with other terms for people formed with -ese, the countable singular noun in reference to a person (as in "I am a Portuguese", "writing about Portuguese cuisine as a Portuguese") is uncommon and often taken as incorrect. In its place, the adjective is used, by itself (as in "I am Portuguese") or before a noun like person, man, or woman ("writing about Portuguese cuisine as a Portuguese person"). See also -ish, which is similarly only used primarily as an adjective or as a plural noun.

Synonyms

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Translations

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Proper noun

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Portuguese

  2. A Romance language originating in Portugal, and now the official language of Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Guiné Bissau (Guinea-Bissau), Cape Verde, East Timor, and Brazil.
    • 2000, João Costa, Portuguese Syntax: new comparative studies, page 65:
      Portuguese, however, is slightly different from Catalan, Spanish, and Romanian in that there is no strict adjacency requirement between wh-words and the verbal cluster in indirect questions.
    • 2001, Richard Louis Edmonds, William John Kyle, “Land Use in Macau: Changes between 1972 and 1994”, in Arthur H. Chen, editor, Culture of Metropolis in Macau: An International Symposium on Cultural Heritage: Strategies for the Twenty-first Century‎[1], Cultural Affairs Bureau [文化局], →ISBN, →OCLC, page 255, column 2:
      Overall it is Taipa (which means mudflats in Portuguese and its Cantonese name Tam-zai also means mud flats) that has changed the most through reclamation followed by the east coast of the Macau Peninsula.

Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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Further reading

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