Work and occupation

The twelfth entry is o requerimento, and for an English reader it is the one word here that can be read straight through and still understood backwards. « A requirement » is a condition imposed from above: the entry requirements of a course, the legal requirements of a trade, what an employer requires of a candidate. O requerimento sits at the opposite end of the same transaction. It is the formal written request made by the person who wants something — an application, a petition, a submission — and it travels upwards, from the citizen to the counter, from the employee to the personnel office. O requerimento tem de ser entregue até sexta therefore says that a form has to be handed in, not that a condition has to be met. The verb behind it leans the same way when it is used of people: requerer um subsídio is to apply for an allowance. That is what makes the trap quiet. A sentence in which requerimento is read as « requirement » still makes perfect grammatical sense; it merely puts the obligation on the wrong side of the counter.