Idioms: the situation and the move

The twenty-ninth entry is pôr o dedo na ferida, and English has the same gesture in almost the same words, which is exactly why it goes wrong. « To put your finger on something » is common, and it means nothing like this. In English the finger identifies: « I cannot put my finger on what is missing » says the speaker has not yet located the fault, and « she put her finger on the real problem » praises an accurate diagnosis. Nobody is hurt in either sentence. Pôr o dedo na ferida presses on a wound that is already there. It names the thing the room was avoiding, and whoever does it knows in advance that it will sting. The two phrases sit on opposite sides of one picture: English is about finding, Portuguese about touching. What English reaches for here is another part of the body altogether, « to touch a raw nerve » or « to hit a nerve », and the literal rendering reads like a translation because it is one. The Portuguese phrase has a quieter neighbour worth keeping beside it, mexer na ferida, for going back to it once too often.