Flat and contract

Two thirds of the way down sits renovar, and it is a false friend of the cruellest kind, because the English word it resembles is real, common and wrong here. English has two descendants of the Latin renovare. « Renovate » came straight out of the books and went almost entirely to buildings: you renovate a kitchen, a hotel, a station. « Renew » was assembled inside English out of « re- » and « new », and it took everything else — a passport, a subscription, a library book, a licence, an acquaintance, and above all a lease. Portuguese never divided the work. Renovar does both jobs, so renovar a cozinha means builders while O contrato renova-se automaticamente is a clause. The sentence on this page is the second kind, and it says the tenancy rolls on by itself unless somebody stops it, which is the most expensive line in any agreement. Read it as « renovate » and you have moved the tenant onto a building site. The word for the building site is on this same page anyway, and it is as obras.