Insurance and contracts

The thirty-second entry is vinculativo, and the English word for it is « binding » — two adjectives that arrive at the same idea from two unrelated languages, and both of them by way of a rope. Vinculativo is built on o vínculo, the tie or bond, which comes straight from the Latin vinculum, a fetter or a chain, itself formed on the verb vincire, to bind. « Binding » comes from the Old English bindan, a Germanic verb whose relatives are still visible in « band », « bundle » and « bond ». Two legal traditions with no vocabulary in common therefore settled on the same picture: an obligation is something that ties you up. That is useful rather than merely pretty, because it makes the whole Portuguese family readable at once — o vínculo laboral is the employment tie, vincular-se a um contrato is to bind oneself to a contract, and desvincular-se is to get out of one. Note also the part of speech: vinculativo is an adjective that agrees, so A proposta é vinculativa durante trinta dias has a feminine ending where English uses an unchanging participle.