Cause and effect

The thirty-ninth entry is em virtude de, and the English phrase that matches it letter for letter is a trap. « By virtue of » exists, it is common in legal and formal prose, and it preserves a reading of « virtue » that ordinary English has lost. Behind both stands the Latin virtus, which named force, efficacy, the power a thing has to do something; a clerk wrote virtute officii, by the power of the office. « Virtue » itself moved on to moral goodness and stayed there, so the old sense survives nowhere except inside this one phrase — « by virtue of section 5 », « by virtue of her office », « by virtue of being the eldest ». Notice what the three have in common: a rule, a title or a status that confers the power. That is exactly what em virtude de does not require. In Portuguese it is an unremarkable causal connective, at home in a newspaper — em virtude do atraso, em virtude do mau tempo. The honest renderings are « owing to », « on account of » and « because of ». Keep « by virtue of » for the sentence in which a power is actually being exercised.