Restoration

The thirteenth entry is o clima dentro da vitrina, and the piece of furniture it names opens the most productive habit English has. A museum calls the glass box « a display case » or simply « a case »; the shop’s version of it is « a showcase », and out of that noun English made a verb by adding nothing at all, so that an exhibition « showcases » three new loans. That step is free here and impossible in Portuguese. Every noun in a conservation studio can take it: a picture is « framed », a drawing is « mounted », a sculpture is « crated », a collection is « catalogued » and « archived », a costume is « mothballed », an object is « labelled », « dated » and « numbered ». Portuguese has to build a verb each time, with an ending and often a prefix as well: emoldurar, encaixotar, catalogar, arquivar, etiquetar, datar. The price of the English freedom is that one written form can be either part of speech, and nothing but its place in the sentence says which of the two is being used.