The story
Abafar is to smother, so desabafar is taking the lid off: you tell a friend the whole thing and breathe again. Portuguese treats it as a favour you can ask for outright. English has to borrow a chest and get the thing off it.
desabafar
duh-zah-bah-FAR[dɨ.zɐ.bɐˈfaɾ]
to get the whole thing off your chest and breathe again
Closest in English: vent, venting, unburden. None of them covers it.
Watch the word
A real game of this word, in 21 seconds.
How it went in the game
Contains the answers. If you want to play the word yourself first, leave this closed.
- Which language is it from?Portuguese (Lisbon)
- What does it literally say?To un-stifle
- Where would you hear it?At the kitchen table long past midnight
- What does it mean?To say out loud what has been sitting on you
How it went
Harder than most words so far.
The most common guess for the translation was 'confess'. Close, but not it.