Quality assurance

The eleventh entry is a desclassificação, and it is the word on this page most likely to be carried off into the wrong subject altogether. On a shop floor a desclassificação is what happens to a part that missed the grade it was made for and is still usable: it is moved down a class and sold, or fitted, for something less demanding — hence a desclassificação permite outro uso. The English word that looks like it belongs to governments. To « declassify » a document is to lift its secrecy and let it be read, and « declassified files » are papers a ministry has finally released; nothing in the word grades anything. What this entry needs is « downgrading », or the verb behind it — a part « downgraded » to a lower specification — and, where a whole batch is relabelled, « regrading ». Two neighbours are worth separating while we are here. In sport desclassificar is « to disqualify », which takes a competitor out rather than lowering him. And « declassed », borrowed long ago from French, describes a person who has come down in the world, never a component.