Busdoor

If you're traveling to Brazil, you have another think coming if you think a busdoor here is the door of a bus. No! That would be too obvious. A busdoor in Brazil, as I found out today, is a portmanteau word for bus outdoor. What? You may be thinking. Bus outdoor? I'll explain. The English Brazilian word outdoor doesn't mean what you normally associate with outdoor. Here an outdoor (see? it's a noun) is a billboard, an advertisement hoarding. Not only is it an anglicism, it is a wrong one, if we consider it's not used like that in English (and I'd bet good money many Brazilians when speaking English would be tempted to say outdoor when they mean the big posters on the street). So, a busdoor is the advertisement they place on a bus rear window, to which drivers in the back would have their attention turned. Very inventive, you might be saying, to which I agree, but that's not the only case of Brazilians' inventiveness when using English. In Brazil shopping is not an activity, it's a place people go to (in other words, the mall).