Material and condition

The forty-seventh entry is fixar, and it is the word on this page an English reader is likeliest to get wrong, because the cognate sits so close that nobody stops to check it. Fixámos a estante à parede com buchas is a shelf being fastened, screwed, made fast, and that is the centre of the Portuguese verb. From there it reaches in two directions English also knows. It settles something that could still move — fixar uma data, fixar um preço — and it holds the eye still, as in fixar o olhar em alguém. What it never does is mend. « Fix » in everyday English means repair before it means anything else: the tap, the boiler, the printer. That sense is simply absent from fixar, and a broken chair asks for arranjar, consertar or reparar instead. The trap runs both ways, because « I fixed the shelf » will be read here as fastening it rather than as putting it right. One verb, two languages, and the half we use most often missing from theirs.