Religion and rite

The second entry is a paróquia, the same word English carries as « parish », and the nouns agree completely: both name the smallest unit a church divides itself into, the one with a priest, a register and a boundary. It is the adjectives that part company. Paroquial in Portuguese has stayed inside the church — o conselho paroquial, a igreja paroquial — and says nothing whatever about anybody’s mind. « Parochial » in English walked out of the church long ago and became a reproach: a parochial outlook is a narrow one, a parochial argument is one that cannot see past its own doorstep, and « parochialism » exists for no other purpose. So a report calling a decision parochial is not discussing church administration at all, and the Portuguese adjective cannot be asked to carry that. Portuguese has the same reproach and builds it on a smaller unit still: bairrista, from o bairro, the neighbourhood. One language measures narrowness by the parish, the other by the street, and only one of them lets the church word do the measuring.