Stock exchange and securities

The twelfth entry is o capital disperso, and the English for it belongs to a family Portuguese never built. « The free float » is the part of a company’s shares that is genuinely in public hands and can be bought and sold, and the noun sits at the end of a chain that begins with a verb. To bring a company to the market is « to float » it — « the firm was floated in March » — and the event itself is « the flotation ». One image, taken from water, does all three jobs, and it keeps working well outside the market, since « to float an idea » is to put it forward and see whether it stays up. Portuguese owns the verb flutuar and spends it on a rate and on a currency, a taxa flutuante, o câmbio flutuante, but never on a company and never on its shares. There it changes image altogether and says a entrada em bolsa for the event and o capital disperso for the result — an entering and a scattering, where English sees one thing afloat.