Doping control

The nineteenth entry is o período de inelegibilidade, and the noun inside it is far narrower in Portuguese than the English word it copies. « Ineligible » is ordinary English. Somebody can be ineligible for a refund, for a grant, for a visa, for the second round of a competition, and nobody hears anything technical in it. Inelegível and a inelegibilidade live in one place only, the law of elections: they describe a person who may not stand for office, and as inelegibilidades is the name of a chapter of that law. For the everyday sense Portuguese reaches for something else — não ter direito a for the refund, estar impedido de for the person who may not act. What this entry shows is a term in transit. The anti-doping rules were drafted in English, the Portuguese version carried the word across whole, and a reader now meets a piece of electoral vocabulary standing in the middle of a sports file. The sense is clear from what surrounds it, and the phrase still sounds imported, because it is.