Pelé as an entry and racist definition expose limits of lexicography – 05/17/2023 – Sérgio Rodrigues

For many people, perhaps most, to be or not to be in the dictionary is a Hamletian argument by which all words must be judged. To be or not to be an entry, that is the question.

Common sense invests dictionaries with a magical aura that goes beyond their role as lexical registers of a language. Always imperfect records, two-dimensional portraits of a mess in perpetual movement.

Two recent episodes help us to reflect on the limits of lexicography and also on the misunderstandings caused by the reputation of dictionaries as tablets of the law.

The first is the inclusion of the entry “pelé” in the digital edition of Michaelis. As reported by UOL on 4/26, it all started with “a great campaign” by the SporTV channel, “which obtained more than 100,000 signatures for Pelé to receive this great tribute”.

As paying homage is not a dictionary assignment, the result is an entry that exhibits little intimacy with the ball. Let’s say that Pelé actually became a common noun, instead of being just an eloquent metaphor of excellence (as in “so-and-so speaks handsomely, he’s the Rui Barbosa of the gang”).

If this is open to debate, it is more difficult to argue that it is an adjective. Has anyone ever seen a phrase like “he’s a pelé cook”? There may be such a usage, the language is vast. Michaelis claims yes, but does not provide any examples.

The issue of the two genders is also controversial: “She is the skin of tennis”, as stated in the entry, seems to contradict current usage. All of this is packaged in a wordy, laudatory style. “Considered the greatest athlete of all time”; by whom?

For me, Pelé is not only the greatest football player that ever lived. He is the greatest that will ever exist, due to the happy crossing of his exceptional merits with the historical moment that he had to live. No dictionary can increase or decrease its size — nor should it worry about it.

Portuguese linguist Margarita Correia, who conducts research on the use of dictionaries throughout the Portuguese-speaking world (to participate, click here), recalls that they “are made by human beings and, as such, are subject to errors, like any work human”.

Mistakes can be serious. In her acceptance speech for the Camões Prize, two weeks ago, the Mozambican writer Paulina Chiziane pointed to one of these: the lexicographical definition of the word catinga as “a nauseating smell characteristic of the black race”.

The fact was one of those that the author cited in defense of the thesis that the Portuguese “needs a cleaning, a decolonization”. It so happens that the language —like the vast majority of dictionaries and speakers— seems innocent in this case: catinga is a bad smell, it has no color.

As the Portuguese writer Bruno Vieira Amaral pointed out in the newspaper “Expresso”, only one dictionary is smeared with racism when defining catinga: in the Porto Editora dictionary, 8th edition, we read that the noun means “unpleasant smell of the skin of Blacks; malodorous sweat” .

Amaral adds that “after all, there are some dictionaries that need cleaning, although I believe that most people who used the word throughout their lives did not learn it from a dictionary. I conclude that it is essential to preserve the catinga. bath”.

I agree. The good thing is that dictionaries, far from written in stone, can be improved. May Porto Editora get rid of its stink soon.

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