Doors are dumb asses, really

This door might look bright but has it any brains?                Photo: bentdanley

There were some interesting reactions to whether the Portuguese saying I had raised in relation to donkeys should be as stupid as a door or with a door (burro como uma porta or burro com uma porta). All the arguments from both Portuguese and Brazilian camps were that it should be como (as), and I was sent some poems and music to prove it, which I will post as soon as I have translated them. I went back to all my dictionaries and, yes, it should be como.

Burro como uma porta = as stupid as a door.

So, it’s official: the Portuguese have low opinions of doors. I dare not ask about windows (janelas).

While checking the dictionaries I came across some other interesting expressions. Burro velho não aprendre línguas (literally, an old donkey doesn’t learn languages) is a Portuguese equivalent of “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks“.

And in Brazilian slang if you want to say a guy has heaps of money you can say ele tem dinheiro pra burro (he has money for a donkey). I presume this emanates from the days when donkeys were forms of luxury transport and the plebs had to walk.

Just as English has synonyms such as ass and donkey, Portuguese has other options for the four-legged creatures, namely um asno and um jumento. There are related words indicating stupidity. Asnear is to behave or talk foolishly, uma asneirada is a big blunder or nonsense, um asneirão is a big ass/fool/idiot.

I like this expression: Mais que asneira! What a dumb thing to do!

And dizer asneiras, to talk nonsense.

Another intriguing expressions is como asno diante de palácio… to be dumbfounded. Literally it translates as  “like a donkey in front of the palace“. I guess those rural country bumpkin asses were awestruck when they came into town and saw a grand palace or mansion.

Jumental is an adjective meaning dumb or asinine, and jumentada means dumbness or stupidity.

Burro also means donkey in Spanish but, as a friend points out, when you go to Italy and you see burro on the menu, it’s not donkey meat, it’s butter!

This is not a burro, it’s a bunda! Brazilian ass in a G-String (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the modern world, ass in English has another, more vulgar meaning, as in “she has a hot ass”. In Portuguese you would not use the word burro here. If you said “she has a hot burro” people might think you were weird. They might report you to the RSPCA. The Portuguese word for one’s posterior (bum or buttocks) is either bunda or – perhaps more crudely – cu.

There are some nice expressions with bunda:

Tire a bunda de cadeira! = get off your ass!     (literally, remove the ass from the chair).

Chegue essa bunda para lá = move your ass!     (move this bum to there)

Nascer com a bunda para a lua = to have good luck     (literally, to be born with your bum pointing to the moon…)

a lua is the moon and o luar is the moonlight.

On that note, I am going to tirer minha bunda de cadeira, and go and have some bread and burro for tea. Yes, just bread and burro because I wasn’t born com a bunda para a lua, and nao tenho dinheiro pra burro. But I’m told I have a nice cu. Cheers Bernardo 🙂

Related articles

• On being a burro (survivingmexico.wordpress.com)

Dunces and doorheads

The Portuguese expression burro com uma porta, meaning to be very stupid (see the “horse meat/donkey” post) was very popular among teachers in Portuguese schools in the last century. Or so I am told by someone whose teacher must have considered him a dunce. I wrote that it was translated literally as “stupid as a door” but that would be burro como uma porta (como = as). In fact, it is more like stupid with a door (com = with). The gist of it is this: with some people’s brains the door will open and close many times, the same piece of knowledge comes in and then it goes straight out again and again, it never hangs around in the house. D’oh! It’s a bit like the English expression “it went in one ear and out the other”. I think burro is a great word for “donkey” … I can picture the braying beast’s toothy grin every time I hear that word. 🙂