The national economy

The ninth entry is o poder aquisitivo, and the adjective is a trap set by a word English owns and has spoiled. « Acquisitive » is built on the same Latin verb and looks like the obvious rendering, but English long ago handed it over to the moralists. An acquisitive person is grasping, always after one more thing; « an acquisitive society » is a phrase of complaint and not of measurement; and « acquisitive crime » is what the police call theft. Nothing in that family describes how much a wage will buy. English names the quantity with a plain verb instead and says « purchasing power », which is what stands in every statistical release and every newspaper paragraph. Portuguese kept the adjective neutral: aquisitivo says only that something has to do with acquiring, so o poder aquisitivo das famílias is a figure and carries no verdict about anybody’s appetites. The rule is easy to hold. Where a Portuguese economics page writes aquisitivo, English writes « purchasing »; where English writes « acquisitive », somebody is being accused of something.