aguâ
Macanese edit
Etymology edit
Uncertain. Possibly from Portuguese a voar (“flying”), with an unexplained /v/ → /g/ shift.[1] Likely unrelated to Portuguese aguar.
Pronunciation edit
Verb edit
aguâ (participle aguando)
- to fly
- Pastro tâ aguâ
- The bird is flying
- (idiomatic, of time) to fly by (to pass very quickly)
- Semana aguá, vem vai.
- Weeks fly by, they come and go.
- to run quickly[2]
- aguâ vai riva ― to run up quickly
Usage notes edit
- Unrelated to Portuguese água or its Macanese descendant águ (“water”).
- Note the intrusive -n- in the participle, possibly to differentiate between it and aguado (“diluted, liquefied”).
References edit
- ^ Batalha, Graciete Nogueira (1988) “aguar”, in Glossário do dialecto macaense: notas linguísticas, etnográficas e folclóricas [Glossary of the Macanese dialect: linguistic, ethnographic and folkloric notes], Macau: Instituto Cultural de Macau, page 152
- ^ https://www.macaneselibrary.org/pub/english/uipatua.htm#a