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PORTUGUESE · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

saudade.

wistfulness, melancholy, nostalgia, yearning, longing; the feeling of missing something or someone

7 characters3 syllables approx.Português language

Meaning & usage

noun/sawˈda.d͡ʒi/Brazil[saʊ̯ˈda.d͡ʒi]Brazil/sa.uˈda.d͡ʒi/Brazil/sɐwˈda.dɨ/Portugal
  1. wistfulness, melancholy, nostalgia, yearning, longing; the feeling of missing something or someone

    feminine
    sentir saudade de alguém
    ter saudades de casa
Where this word comes from

First attested in the 16th century. Inherited from Old Galician-Portuguese soydade, from Latin sōlitātem (“solitude”). The word’s irregular phonetic development is likely due to analogy with words such as saudar (“to wish good health”) and saudade (“salvation”, from Latin *salūtātem). Additionally, learned hypercorrection of the diphthong ⟨oi⟩ to ⟨au⟩ (compare coisa with the Latinism causa) and analogy with Arabic سَوْدَاء (sawdāʔ, “melancholy”, literally “black bile”) have been theorized as contributing factors.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.