Biology and ecology in Portuguese

The forty-seventh entry is em estado selvagem, and the adjective inside it is the most inviting trap on the page. Selvagem comes down from Latin silvaticus, of the wood, built on silva, the forest, and the same word reached English through Old French as « savage ». The form survived; the sense did not. In present-day English « savage » describes cruelty — a savage attack, a savage review, a savage winter — and used of people it carries a colonial history that puts it out of reach as a neutral description. Portuguese kept the mild sense whole: um animal selvagem is simply one that lives outside human keeping, with nothing violent implied anywhere in it. The word English uses for that is the Germanic one, « wild », and in this phrase it does not even want an adjective. « In the wild » puts an article in front of a bare adjective and treats the result as a place, so Restam duzentos em estado selvagem is « two hundred are left in the wild ». Anything nearer the Portuguese, such as « in a savage state », has described a temper rather than a habitat.