Comparle

Portuguesepractice word

saudade

sow-DAH-duh[sɐwˈðaðɨ]

Pronunciation: Aliphee · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

a bittersweet ache for what's absent — longing

Closest in English: longing, yearning, nostalgia. None of them covers it.

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The story

Portugal built a whole musical genre on it: fado is saudade set to guitars, and Brazil gives the feeling its own calendar day each January. English readers may know the word from untranslatable lists, which is cheating slightly, because it translates most of the way. It lands somewhere between longing and yearning.

How it went in the game

Contains the answers. If you want to play the word yourself first, leave this closed.

  1. Which language is it from?Portuguese
  2. Which feeling does it carry?Aching for home, even for people
  3. Where would you hear it?In a fado house in Lisbon, lights low
  4. What does it mean?A bittersweet ache for what's gone

How it went

One of the easier words so far.

Round one, language, was where most points went.

More Portuguese words

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