Soil science

The seventh entry is o volume de poros, and the English word at the heart of it is quietly two words. « A pore » is the opening — in a skin, in a rock, in a soil — and it gives the adjective « porous » and the noun « porosity », so « the pore volume » of a soil is the share of it that is hole rather than solid. Then there is the verb. « To pore over » something is to study it long and closely: « she pored over the soil map for an hour », « he pores over the figures every evening ». It has nothing to do with the openings, and it is never used without « over » or « on ». The two are unrelated words that happen to be spelled alike, and a sentence has to keep them apart, because « poring over the pores » is perfectly good English. Portuguese is spared all of it: o poro is the opening and nothing else, and for the long reading it says debruçar-se sobre, which pictures a body bent over a table.