Ornithology in Portuguese

The ninth entry is a saída do ninho, three words for a moment English has a single verb for: « to fledge ». A chick fledges when its feathers have grown enough to carry it off the nest, and « fledging » is the event this entry names. The verb keeps a useful distinction alive beside it: a bird still in the nest is « a nestling », and the same bird a day later is « a fledgling », which is why a wildlife charity asks a caller which of the two has been found before telling anybody to leave it where it is. That second noun is the one that has travelled furthest. « A fledgling » now names anything young enough to fall over — a fledgling company, a fledgling democracy, a fledgling career — and the adjective went the same way from the other end, since « fully fledged » says that somebody has every qualification and is said of doctors and of arguments far more often than of birds. A saída do ninho carries none of that. It stays literal, and the figurative sense has to be built somewhere else in the sentence.