Meteorology and forecasting

The thirty-third entry is a brisa marítima, and it catches the English word at the one moment when it is still only weather. « A breeze » began there and has very nearly left. It is now the ordinary English word for anything that costs no effort: « the exam was a breeze », « moving house was not exactly a breeze ». The verb went with it — « she breezed through the interview », « he breezed in at eleven as though nothing had happened » — and so did the adjective. A breezy afternoon is still windy, but a breezy note is cheerful and a little offhand, and a breezy manner describes a person rather than a sky. A brisa has none of this. It stays on the water and in poetry, and Portuguese reaches somewhere else entirely for the easy thing: foi canja, which says it was chicken soup, is what a speaker uses of an exam that gave no trouble. So this entry crosses straight over, a brisa marítima for the sea breeze, while « it was a breeze » cannot be carried across at all.