Librarianship

The last entry is a confidencialidade do empréstimo, and the noun at the end of it marks the one place on this page where English is harder than Portuguese rather than easier. O empréstimo names the transaction and says nothing about which way it runs: o empréstimo domiciliário is the library handing a book out, pedir um livro de empréstimo is the reader taking one away, and the same noun serves both ends of the counter. English has that single noun too, « a loan », and it is just as neutral. The verb is where we lose the neutrality. « To lend » is to give the thing, « to borrow » is to take it, the direction sits inside the word rather than in the sentence around it, and the two can never be swapped without reversing who has the book. Portuguese manages the same distinction with one verb and a phrase, emprestar for the giving side and pedir emprestado for the taking side. Read this entry the second way: what is kept confidential is who borrowed, not who lent.