Oncology

The forty-first entry is a diretiva antecipada de vontade, and the English term for it turns on a single letter. It is « an advance directive ». The first word is the bare noun « advance » standing in front of another noun and meaning beforehand, exactly as it does in « advance payment », « advance notice » and « advance booking ». British practice has a second name for the same paper, « an advance decision », and it is built the same way. What the phrase never takes is « advanced ». That is a past participle, it means far along or well developed, and it lives in « advanced students » and « advanced technology ». On this page it also has a weight of its own, because « advanced disease » is disease that has already gone a long way. So the slip costs more here than almost anywhere else: whoever writes « an advanced directive » has put the adjective from the gravest line of a report next to a document about what a person wants. Portuguese runs no such risk, since antecipada says beforehand and avançada keeps well away from it.