Word of the Day

Monday, April 16, 2007

Zeugma

Yesterday while reading a magazine on Portuguese, I came across zeugma being used as a feminine noun, which struck me as odd, since I'd always heard and used it myself as a masculine noun (o zeugma and not a zeugma). I went to the dictionary to check which one was right, me or the magazine, and to my great surprise I found out zeugma can be masculine and feminine, an unusual phenomenon for inanimate words in Portuguese. Anyway, I still prefer o zeugma since it comes from a Greek neuter word and has the company of other -ma words that are masculine: o teorema, o problema, o morfema, o fonema, all of Greek descent.

I remember a word that has two genders in Portuguese, but that's due to national preferences: o sanduíche (Brazil), a sanduíche (Portugal).

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