Neighbours and the shared building

The fourth entry is o porteiro, and the English word that looks like it is not one word at all. « Porter » is two, fallen together by accident and never separated since. One of them comes from Latin porta, a door, by way of portarius, the man who keeps it: that is the college porter, the hall porter of a hotel, the porter sitting in his lodge. The other comes from Latin portare, to carry, by way of portator: that is the station porter and the hospital porter, who carry things and open nothing at all. English spells both the same and leaves the building to say which is meant. Portuguese never had that problem, because it kept the two roots in two words that cannot be confused: o porteiro belongs to a porta and does the door, while the one who carries is o carregador, from carregar. There is a reason the gloss above says « the caretaker » instead: in a block of flats that is the ordinary English word, and « porter » would quietly move the man into a hotel.