Appointments and arrangements

Eighteenth on this list is a duração, and an English reader has been carrying its verb about inside a preposition for six hundred years. Latin durare, to last, gave Portuguese durar, a duração and duradouro, three words plainly of one family. English borrowed the same verb through Old French and had it as « dure », a verb meaning to last — and then let it die. One form survived. « During » is that lost verb’s present participle, and « during the visit » began as an absolute construction meaning the visit lasting, which is exactly why it stands where a preposition stands and can be parsed as nothing else. So a duração da visita é de uma hora and « during the visit » hold the identical root: on one side a noun with a living family round it, on the other a fossil whose only surviving relatives are « endure » and « durable ». Which means that every stretch of time on this page — how long a course runs, how long a wait lasted — is measured in Portuguese with a verb the reader already says daily without hearing it.