By Tom Moore
Rio de Janeiro – Every culture and every language lives not only through its concrete vocabulary, but most vividly through its stock of poetic imagery and metaphor. (The most compelling imagining of this may have been that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where Captain Picard was literally unable to communicate with an alien until he began to inhabit the other’s references to literature and myth.)
And, of course, the imagery and metaphors vary depending on the physical (and metaphysical) circumstances of the culture involved. Portugal, like England, was a great seafaring nation – a small strip of land on the Atlantic taking for its own the seven seas. It bequeathed a language full of maritime expressions to its most important colony, Brazil, and the Brazilian popular vernacular still smacks of the sea.
Every Brazilian knows that “Navegar é preciso” (Navigating is necessary), and usually identifies this with Camões, the great Baroque poet of the Portuguese sea voyages of the early modern age, when Europeans discovered Brazil (the full expression actually goes back to the Roman general, Pompey, who said Navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse!” (Navigating is necessary, life is not necessary!).
The formulation is echoed elsewhere in everyday language, for example in the motto “Resistir é preciso!” (resistance is necessary) of the MV-Brasil (the Movimento Pela Valorização da Cultura, do Idioma e das Riquezas do Brasil – Movement for the Preservation of the Culture, Language and Riches of Brazil).
The trials and tribulations of the storm-tossed caravel on the open ocean (or near the treacherous reefs and rocks of the coast) still serve to describe daily life on land in Brazil. When something is going well, you can say that “vai de vento em popa” – literally, the wind is directly astern (behind the poop, the elevated area at the stern with the captain’s quarters), filling the square sails of the caravel, which sailed most effectively downwind. A Brazilian proverb, still widely used, tells us that “De nada adianta o vento estar a favor se não se sabe pra onde virar o leme” (It’s no use to have a favorable wind if you don’t know which way to turn the steering oar), or in everyday terms, “it’s no use being lucky if you don’t know how to use it.”
The Brazilian household is like a ship and its crew, with the man at the helm, of course. As the proverb has it “Mulher à vela, marido ao leme” – Wife at the sail, husband at the tiller – a team, working together, but with the husband giving the direction. And a woman without a husband is directionless: “Mulher sem marido, barco sem leme,” and not only that in grave danger, since another proverb tells Brazilians that “Navio sem leme, naufrágio certo” (Ship without a tiller is a shipwreck for sure). This is not to say that the role of tillerman (for the husband ) is all cakes and ale, since it is his responsibility to keep the ship safely on course, without letting it founder in open waters, or run aground – and one who doesn’t want to suffer at the tiller, has to suffer on the rocks (“Quem não quer sofrer o leme, tem de sofrer o escolho”).
A nautical metaphor which has gone so deep into Brazilian language that most Brazilians have forgotten its watery origins is the expression “à toa” or “à-toa,” which has come to have a broad spectrum of meanings. The literal meaning is “under tow,” that is a ship with no sails raised, no motion of its own, not setting its own course, only moving through the water because there is a tow rope pulling it along. Figuratively it has come to mean things like “at random,” “whatever,” “worthless,” “careless,” “thoughtless,” “useless,” “unemployed.”
Originally these meanings were overwhelmingly negative and pejorative, but the stigma has weakened over time, due to the popularity of the malandros (hustlers) and the relaxed attitude of the Brazilian hippie of thirty years ago. Uma coisa à-toa is something insignificant, not worth worrying about (“Não se irrite por uma coisa à-toa,” don’t get upset for no reason), but significantly “coisa à-toa“ is also synonymous for “woman” (who as we saw above, is adrift without a man giving direction). And even worse, a “mulher à-toa” is one of the many ways to say “prostitute.”
More recent song lyrics show the positive side of being “à toa” – that is being open to change, to moving in new directions, to being Zen. Caetano Veloso sings:
Rapte-me camaleoa
Adapte-me a uma cama boa
Capte-me uma mensagem à toa
De uma quasar pulsando loa
Interestelar canoa….
And Chiclete com Banana (axé music from Bahia) sings, in what would be a literally impossible verse “Navego à toa numa boa, navego no seu doce sorriso” (literally: “I navigate while being towed,” but figuratively “I am sailing along as happy as can be, I am sailing along on your sweet smile”). On the other hand, Alceu Valença, though he lives in Rio (when he’s not at his other home in Olinda), maintains the older, negative sense, in his song Longe Demais:
Longe demais você está indo
Com um apetite voraz
Caminha sem nenhum sentido
(You are going too far, with your voracious appetite, going without direction)
Once your ship has run aground, hit a reef, it is encalhado (literally, on a rock), it is stuck, not going anywhere. Both men and women can be encalhado, but it is more frequently said of women. A mulher encalhada is single, and “procurando uma aliança para ganhar de prêmio um macho para desencalhar” (looking for a wedding ring so that she can win a man to get her off the rocks), from the usual macho point of view, a view only reinforced by the website of Singles by Choice, which opines that “mulher encalhada é aquela que encalhou em algum marido porque não tem coragem de ficar sozinha” (an encalhada is someone who has run aground on some husband, because she doesn’t have the courage to stay single.) Encalhado is also used when you are talking about goods that are past their sell-by date (another metaphor used about women, not very nice….) and about beached whales.
A ship that has run aground may possibly get back off again, but if it hit during a storm it may get pounded to pieces. Any sort of undertaking can get shipwrecked (naufragar), and the unlucky who are shipwrecked may swim, swim, swim, and die on the beach (nadar, nadar, nadar e morrer na praia). This is said of someone who worked their fingers to the bone, almost succeeded, and as we say “snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory,” and frequently used of soccer teams (the archetypical example for Americans would be the Boston Red Sox).
Sea life, whether mammalian, piscine, or arthropod, is another rich source of metaphor. “Boca de siri “ (crab mouth) means keep your mouth shut, don’t say anything about it (since the notion is that the crab’s mouth is its claw, which doesn’t even let go after the crab is dead. Or, as we would say in English, “clam up.” And it doesn’t matter which party is in power – it is always the little people who pay the price (“Quando o mar briga com a praia, quem apanha é caranguejo” – when the ocean fights with the beach, it’s the crab that gets screwed.)
Even the ferry from Niterói to Rio de Janeiro has produced its metaphors (Origenes Lessa wrote memorably of the boy who dreamed of growing up to be a sailor with a woman in every port, and had to content himself, as a seaman on the Niterói ferry, with one woman on each side of Guanabara Bay). The ferry, which used to be known as the Barca da Cantareira, is a metaphor for the bisexual (someone who walks both sides of the street), and the rocking of the floats where the ferry takes on passengers recalls for some the weaving and wobbling of the Carioca who has had a few too many chopps (draft beers).
Some of the most familiar expressions in Rio slang come from the beach, as you might expect. Every Carioca has their favorite beach, and their favorite spot on their favorite beach (my woman and I hang out on Ipanema near Posto 9). And so if we are invited to do something/go somewhere that doesn’t appeal, we will usually say (without being pejorative) “não é minha praia” – that’s not my beach. Someone who is “boiando” (floating) is just there, out of it, clueless.
A real loser is like “merda n’agua” (shit floating on the water) – he doesn’t sink, but just goes where the current takes him. The winner, on the other hand, is someone who likes to show off his talents with a surfboard “tirando onda” (literally stealing a wave), but used for anyone who is being conceited and trying to show off. And one of the favorite activities of idle Carioca youth – lighting a baseado (joint) on the beach was immortalized by Gabriel o Pensador with the refrain “sente a maresia” (smell the salt air….but the “salt air” that one smells is one with the perfume of burning cannabis leaves.
And finally a toponymical note: two Carioca neighborhoods have nautical names: Leme (the word for the steering oar mentioned above) – perhaps named thus because the small hill by the water reminded the sailors of the poop from which they steered; and Gávea, in English, “crow’s nest,” the small aerie on the mast where the lookout sits when spying for land or other vessels, certainly meant to name the Pedra da Gávea, a lookout point if there ever was one.
Get more interesting language and linguistics content in our magazine. Click here to subscribe https://sillyli.ng/6X3hyA or you can subscribe below
