Parties and celebrations

The seventeenth entry is o batizado, and it is worth taking apart, because English keeps two words where Portuguese has one and the two were built on different halves of the same ceremony. Batizado goes back through Latin baptizare to the Greek baptizein, which meant nothing more solemn than to dip or to plunge: the noun describes the water and says no more. English owns that word as « baptism », but has narrowed it to theology and to the rite considered as doctrine. For the Sunday morning with the family, the gown and the photographs we reach instead for « a christening », which is native and built on Christ — Old English cristnian meant to make somebody a Christian. So o batizado é no domingo de manhã is « the christening is on Sunday morning », and « the baptism » would put a congregation in the room. The same split shows when the word travels: English christens a ship, Portuguese says batizar for exactly that job, and batizar goes one step further still, being also the wry everyday verb for watering down wine.