In English the A words tend to convey intellectual sentiments and mental states: angry, aroused, aspire, assert, apprehensive, activate, against, analyze, advise, agitate, agree, alive, alone, alert, anxious, approve, arrogant, assert, agonise, absurd, accuse, addictive, attack. Maybe this why the alpha males are called alphas!
Do the A words have the same aggro in my five Romance languages? Let’s flip through my five big dictionaries to assess! Here are words that appeal to me for some reason, mainly for the sound. I hope you’ll find them more amusing than annoying.
Portuguese
abocanhar 1) to bite or bite off; 2) to snap at; 3) tear with teeth; 4) to eat, swallow, devour; 5) to seize possession of; 6) to slander, defame. Homen de má lingua que abocanha toda gente, a foul-mouthed, slanderous man. (Literally, a man of bad language who slanders everyone.)
You’ll remember this verb more easily by thinking of boca – mouth in Portuguese.
French
achaler, to hassle, to bug. Achale-moi pas means don’t bug me! Practise it on pesky people.
Romanian
On your travels in Romania, watch out for un antropofag, a man-eater, cannibal.
Was Dracula ‘un antropofag’?
Spanish
una andanada, 1) a broadside or barrage; 2) a reprimand or rebuke; 3) a covered stand. Echar/soltar una andanada, to say something out of the blue
Italian
Here’s a word that suits me to an A… abbuffarsi, to stuff oneself; the related words are abbuffata, a nosh-up, binge, blow-out; farsi un’abbuffata, to stuff oneself. Look, here’s an Italian swan…
This swan wants to binge – il cigno vuole abbuffarsi
You can binge on more words related to food in the tasty part of My Five Romances.
The A words can also be appealing
Sing along now… When a moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore
Amore is the Italian word for love (and there are variants of that, of course, and lots of songs about love, in other Romance languages).
- French has accueil, welcome
- Spanish has acariciar, to caress
- Portuguese has alegre, happy, joyful
- Romanian has afectuos, affectionate
That’s all, folks – adieu! M5R
