Marketing and advertising

The ninth entry is cativar, and A campanha cativa quem passa a pé is where the trouble starts, because the cognate is sitting right there and will not do the work. English broke the Latin verb into pieces and gave each piece a narrow job. « To capture » takes a thing by force; « captive » is what the prisoner is; « to captivate » was left with the strongest kind of charm, the sort that holds somebody spellbound. None of the three fits an advertisement that simply works on passers-by. Portuguese kept one verb across the whole range and lets the sentence say how strong it is. Cativar is to win somebody over, to appeal to them, to make them fond of you: a shop window cativa, a teacher cativa a class, and ele cativa toda a gente says that everybody likes him, with nobody enchanted. The adjective still holds the old end, since um lugar cativo is a seat kept back for one person. So the safe renderings here are « win over », « appeal to » and « draw in », and « captivate » should wait for the sentence that really means it.