Origins and Life Events

The entry vir de família looks like a phrase a reader can assemble from its parts, and that is exactly why it goes wrong. A teimosia vem de família is the stubbornness runs in the family, and nobody writing English would say that a trait comes from the family. The two languages chose different verbs for the same observation, and each verb brings its own picture. Portuguese takes vir, a verb of arrival: the trait travelled out of the household and reached this person, so the family is a source and the person is where the line arrives. English takes « run », a verb of continued motion: the trait moves along the family, through one generation and into the next, and nobody is the endpoint. That is why the English version needs « in » while the Portuguese one needs de — one puts the trait inside a channel, the other has it leaving a place. A small thing follows for anybody building the sentence: English insists on the article, « it runs in the family », whereas família here stands bare, with no a in front of it.