Passwords and account security

Twenty-sixth on this list is o ataque por adivinhação, and the noun at the end of it stands on a verb that English owns and has almost stopped using. Adivinhar comes from Latin divinare, to foretell, built on divinus, belonging to the gods: to guess was once to say what only a god could know. English took the very same verb through Old French and kept it as « to divine », but left it in a solemn corner of the language. One divines another person’s intentions; a diviner walks a field with a forked stick; « divination » happens over cards — and not one of those is the everyday word. For ordinary guessing English reaches instead for « guess », which is Germanic and has no gods anywhere in it. Portuguese went the other way and wore the Latin verb down to the plainest thing it has: adivinha quem é is what one says at a door, and uma adivinha is a riddle a child is set. So this entry names a guessing attack, and the English cognate is exactly the word that cannot be used to name it.