Music: the technical words

The forty-third entry is improvisar, and on this page it means exactly what it looks like: the player makes the music up as it goes. The difference appears once the word leaves the concert hall. In Portuguese it is an ordinary, unremarkable verb that anybody uses about anything. Improvisar um jantar is putting a meal together from whatever is in the fridge, improvisar uma resposta is answering without having prepared, and tivemos de improvisar is what you say about an afternoon that stopped going to plan. English has the same verb and keeps it at a certain height. « Improvise » sounds either artistic or faintly official, and for the everyday sense we reach for an idiom instead — and the commonest one comes straight back out of music. « To play it by ear » is what a musician does without the printed notes, and it has become the ordinary way of saying that a decision will be taken as the day unfolds. « Off the cuff » does the same work for a speech. So vamos improvisar is rarely « we shall improvise »; it is « we shall play it by ear ».