Interesting use of até

Hi there fellow PP’ers!

I came across this sentence in my textbook:

O Daniel gosta tanto do curso que até passa os seus tempos livres no seu local preferido: o mar.

It took me ages to figure out that até in this instance means even:
"Daniel likes the course so much that he even spends his free time… "

Somehow it seemed like a very illogical construction. The only way I can make sense of it is to think of até as “until” and from there arrive at “to the point of”:

“Daniel likes the course so much, to the point of spending his free time…”

Até is such a tricky little critter! :exploding_head:
Does anyone else have any examples of its idomatic usage?

Agradeço imenso!

5 Likes

Oh @Jeremy, até tu ainda ficas surpreendido com estas coisas do português! :smile:

(Does this work as an example?)

4 Likes

A couple more:

“até mais” - even more
“até melhor” - even better

5 Likes

LOL @Joseph… a perfect example, thank you :laughing:

2 Likes

Can somebody explain how the word ‘ate’ is used. It seems sometimes to mean ‘until’ and other times ‘even’. Can it be used in other ways too?

Yes, it all depends on the context. With prepositions in particular, it’s usually better not to think of the literal translation because it varies so much. Instead, try to pick up on different contexts in which it’s used and develop a more general sense of the meaning. Até could mean until, even, up to, by, as far as, and more. So it seems to impart this general sense of from one point to another or to what extent / to what point, but that applies differently in different contexts.

Tip: If you go to the Search page and search “até”, then filter by “Shorties”, it will show you all the Shorties that contain the word “até” so you can find different uses. :slight_smile:

Thanks Molly. I went to Search as you suggested, but when I filtered to Shorties there appeared 103 shorties. Do they all include ‘ate’ or did I do something wrong? :thinking:

That sounds about right actually! It’s a very common word.

When you go to an individual Shorty you can quickly find “até” by hitting Command F (or Control F on Windows) on your keyboard and then type até. That will highlight where the word is used. (It will also highlight any words containing those letters, and the English word “ate”, but it will still make it easier to find “até” quickly.) :slight_smile:

Thanks again Molly. Problem here is that I use my iPad for PP and don’t have an external keyboard. Can’t see how to do commands on the on-screen keyboard. I have a Windows laptop but I prefer to use iPad. Any ideas?

Ah yeah on mobile/tablet it’s a little harder to do. With Google Chrome you can click the three dots … in the bottom right and scroll down to “Find in page”. With Safari you can click the share icon and scroll down to “Find on page”. Then you use the arrows to highlight all the instances of that word on the page.