Building and property

Entry thirty-nine is a área útil, and the adjective inside it is worth more than the phrase. Útil looks like « useful » and is « useful » in ordinary speech — um conselho útil, a useful piece of advice. But Portuguese has sent it out to three further jobs that English hands to three different words. In a área útil it means usable: the floor space somebody can actually stand on, once walls and shafts are taken off, and that is the figure a flat is sold on. In o dia útil it means working: a business day, the unit in which every deadline in a contract is counted, so that dez dias úteis is a fortnight and not ten days, and a reader who takes it for a useful day has misread a date. In a carga útil it is the payload, what a lorry may carry over and above its own weight. One thread runs through all four: what is left once the dead part has been deducted — the walls, the weekend, the empty vehicle. English loses that thread four times over.