# Portuguese
## English
### Alternative forms

* Portugueese, Portugueze (both obsolete)
* (misspelling) Portugese

### Etymology

From Portuguese português.

### Pronunciation

* (UK) IPA: /ˌpɔː.t͡ʃəˈɡiːz/
* (General American) IPA: /ˈpɔɹ.t͡ʃə.ɡiz/
* Audio (UK):(file)
* Audio (US):(file)
* Rhymes: -iːz

### Adjective

Portuguese (comparative more Portuguese, superlative most Portuguese)
* Of or pertaining to Portugal.
    Portuguese borders
** 1973, Roger Parkinson, The Peninsular War, page 104:The British army had already moved over the border and the commander had established his HQ high in the central Portuguese mountains at Viseu.
* Of or pertaining to the people of Portugal or their culture.
    Hypernym: European
    Portuguese cuisines
** 1887, George Brown Goode, The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, section IV, page 33:In San Diego County there is but one Portuguese fisherman, as is also the case in Los Angeles, the county immediately adjoining.
* Of or pertaining to the Portuguese language.
    Hypernym: Romance
    Portuguese verbs
** 1981, Milton Mariano Azevedo, A Contrastive Phonology of Portuguese and English, page 31:The latter feature indicates that a Portuguese consonant cannot constitute the nucleus of a syllable.

#### Synonyms

* Portingal (obsolete)

#### Derived terms

* Portuguese cubit
* Portuguese Empire
* Portuguese Guiana
* Portuguese guitar
* Portuguese India
* Portuguese man-of-war
* Portuguese Opening
* Portuguese Podengo
* Portuguese Pointer
* Portuguese squill

#### Translations
### Noun

Portuguese (plural Portuguese or (archaic) Portugueses)
* (chiefly in the plural) A person native to, or living in, Portugal.
** 1897, Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous:[…] but so close lay the boats that even single hooks snarled, and Harvey found himself in hot argument with a gentle, hairy Newfoundlander on one side and a howling Portuguese on the other.
** 1920, Paulus Edward Pieris, Ceylon and the Portuguese, 1505-1658, page 184:With a view to securing its more efficient working, a Portuguese was placed in charge of the entire department as Vidane.
** 2000, René Chartrand, Bill Younghusband, The Portuguese Army of the Napoleonic Wars, volume 1, page 23:Beresford required all materials for coatees, waistcoats and pantaloons to be sent out unmade, as the Portuguese were perfectly capable of making the suits up properly after delivery.
** For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Portuguese.

#### Usage notes

As with other terms for people formed with -ese, the countable singular noun in reference to a person (as in "I am a Portuguese", "writing about Portuguese cuisine as a Portuguese") is uncommon and often taken as incorrect. In its place, the adjective is used, by itself (as in "I am Portuguese") or before a noun like person, man, or woman ("writing about Portuguese cuisine as a Portuguese person"). See also -ish, which is similarly only used primarily as an adjective or as a plural noun.

#### Synonyms

* Portingal (obsolete)
* Portugal (now rare)

#### Translations
### Proper noun

Portuguese
* A Romance language originating in Portugal, and now the official language of Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Guiné Bissau (Guinea-Bissau), Cape Verde, East Timor, and Brazil.
** 2000, João Costa, Portuguese Syntax: new comparative studies, page 65:Portuguese, however, is slightly different from Catalan, Spanish, and Romanian in that there is no strict adjacency requirement between wh-words and the verbal cluster in indirect questions.
** 2001, Richard Louis Edmonds, William John Kyle, “Land Use in Macau: Changes between 1972 and 1994”, in Arthur H. Chen, editor, Culture of Metropolis in Macau: An International Symposium on Cultural Heritage: Strategies for the Twenty-first Century‎, Cultural Affairs Bureau [文化局], →ISBN, →OCLC, page 255, column 2:Overall it is Taipa (which means mudflats in Portuguese and its Cantonese name Tam-zai also means mud flats) that has changed the most through reclamation followed by the east coast of the Macau Peninsula.

#### Derived terms

* Old Galician-Portuguese
* West African Pidgin Portuguese

#### See also

* Wiktionary's coverage of Portuguese terms
* Appendix:Portuguese Swadesh list for a Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words in Portuguese

### Further reading

* Portuguese - English Dictionary: from Webster's Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
* ISO 639-1 code pt, ISO 639-3 code por (SIL)
* Ethnologue entry for Portuguese, por ⁠