Portuguese

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English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Portuguese português.

Pronunciation

European Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese

Adjective

Portuguese (comparative more Portuguese, superlative most Portuguese)

  1. Of or pertaining to the region of Portugal.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

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

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 with a word like person, man, or woman ("writing about Portuguese cuisine as a Portuguese person").

Synonyms

Translations

Proper noun

Portuguese

  1. 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, 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

Translations

See also

Further reading

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia