Entomology

The twelfth entry is o período de voo, and the English word that translates o voo is quietly doing two jobs. « Flight » belongs to « to fly »: the flight of a moth, a flight of geese, an evening flight to Lisbon. But « flight » belongs just as much to « to flee », and in that second life it has nothing to do with wings. « The flight of refugees » is an escape made on foot. « To take flight » is to bolt, not to take off. « To put an army to flight » is to make it run, and the soldier who runs is « in flight ». Nothing in the spelling says which of the two is meant; only the sentence around it does. Portuguese keeps the two apart and never has to choose. O voo is the flying one and hangs on voar, while running away is a fuga, from fugir. So a fuga de capitais and o voo da borboleta share no word at all, and the entomologist’s período de voo can only be about wings. Going the other way, a translator has to decide every single time.