Perfumery

The fourteenth entry is o fixador, and the obvious English word for it is the wrong one. Fixar is to fix, o fixador is the thing that does the fixing, and the ordinary English way of building that noun would give « a fixer ». English owns that word, and it is busy elsewhere. « A fixer » is the person who makes awkward problems go away — the fixer a foreign correspondent hires on landing — and it is also the bath in a darkroom that stops a print from fading. Neither belongs on a perfumer’s bench. For a material that slows the light notes down, English reaches instead for the ending Latin left it, -ivus, and says « a fixative », which is also what a painter sprays over a charcoal drawing. The same division runs through the family: « a preservative » and « an adhesive » are substances, while « an adherent » is a person. The short rule is this. In Portuguese the ending -dor serves the man and the material alike; in English, « -er » leans towards the man and « -ive » towards the material.