Development cooperation

The tenth entry is a capacidade de absorção, and the difficulty in it is not the noun but the adjective English puts in front. Portuguese builds a phrase of this kind with de and a noun — de absorção — and keeps one adjective, absorvente, for everything else. English made three adjectives out of the one verb and gave each of them a separate trade. « Absorbent » belongs to materials that soak liquid up: absorbent paper, an absorbent dressing, an absorbent cloth. « Absorbing » belongs to attention: an absorbing book, absorbing work, a film so absorbing that nobody moved. « Absorptive » is the technical one, and it is the one this entry needs — « absorptive capacity », the amount a system, an economy or an administration can really take in and put to use. None of the three will stand in for another: « an absorbing capacity » describes a fascinating one, and « absorbent capacity » sends the reader to a roll of kitchen paper. The lesson reaches further than this line: where Portuguese hangs a noun on de, English has to choose a suffix, and the suffix decides the field.