Public procurement

The fourteenth entry is a entrega eletrónica da proposta, and the ordinary English name for what happens there is the submission of the tender. That noun has two lives. In an office it is neutral and countable: « a submission » is the thing handed in and the act of handing it in, and a portal closes for submissions at noon. Away from the office the same word means giving way. « Submission » is what a beaten party offers, a wrestler who taps out has lost by submission, and « submissive » describes somebody who does not argue back. The verb carries both loads in one shape: a firm submits a tender, a country submits to an authority, and only what follows the verb tells them apart, since the paper comes straight after it while the yielding needs « to ». Portuguese keeps the two in separate boxes. The handing in is a entrega or a apresentação, while a submissão means subjection and nothing else, so a submissão da proposta reads to a Portuguese ear as though the bid itself had surrendered.