Word of the Day

Friday, February 23, 2007

Rodoviária

It's a pity that my dictionary just disabused me of the notion that rodoviária (Portuguese for intercity bus station) is not derived from Greek δός (road) + Latin via (also road). The word comes from rodagem (from rodar, to rodate) and via (road). It would be funny to have a word meaning road road. Βut again, if δός had any say in building the word, the proper Portuguese word would be hodoviária, since the hard breathing (the ῾ over the first o) would have been transliterated into Latin as hodos with an h, which would have been kept in Portuguese.

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