Journalism and research

The twenty-fifth entry is a citação em destaque, and the noun that closes it began life on a battlefield. Destacar is not inherited Latin stock: Portuguese took it from the French détacher, and what it first meant was to send a body of men away from the main force for a job of their own. That sense is still whole in o destacamento, the detachment, and in destacar tropas. From there the verb made a second move that English never made with the word it borrowed at the same time. A party sent out from the ranks is a party that stands apart and is therefore seen, and destacar slid from separating to standing out: destacar-se numa prova is to do conspicuously well in an examination, em destaque is up in front where the eye goes first, and o destaque da semana is the week’s outstanding item. « Detach » stopped at the first sense and never picked up the second, so it cannot render this entry at all. What a newsroom here calls the thing is « a pull quote », and for the verb it reaches for « to feature » or « to pick out ».