One very long word in Portuguese I love is 27 letters long. It’s inconstitucionalissimamente meaning ‘very unconstitutionally’.

We are all, are we not, capable of ‘off days’, of not ‘bringing our A game’, of ‘being out to lunch? Portuguese has some highly inventive means of expressing our personal failings:

ter macaquinhos na cabeça to have a crazy idea (literally, to have little monkeys inside your head)

tem macaquinhos no sotão a sandwich short of a picnic (literally, he has little monkeys in the attic)

barata tonta to be clumsy (literally, looks like a silly cockroach)

cabeca d’alho xoxo he is crazy (literally ‘he has a head of rotten garlic’)

viajou na maionese to live in a dream world (literally, to travel in the mayonnaise)

Those who learn other languages than their own will sometimes come across words which mean very different things from what they do in ours. Linguistic experts call these words 'false cognates' or faux amis (literally 'false friends'). They could possibly be a source of confusion, but more likely of humour as in these Portuguese examples:

escape car exhaust or gas leak

parente a relative

compromisso engagement

pasta a briefcase. folder

estupido rude

Adam Jacot de Boinod is the author of The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from around the World, published by Penguin Books.