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Espeland Posted 19 years ago
Vocabulary
salao
Hello everybody !
I wonder where the word "salao" comes from. It seems to mean "very unlucky" and appears right at the beginning of Ernest Hemingway's "The old man and the sea" :
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, [...]
In Portugese "salão" means "saloon" but that can't be the origine, can it ?
I wonder where the word "salao" comes from. It seems to mean "very unlucky" and appears right at the beginning of Ernest Hemingway's "The old man and the sea" :
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, [...]
In Portugese "salão" means "saloon" but that can't be the origine, can it ?
Top answer
Perhaps Spanish?
- Perhaps Spanish?
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18 Answers
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Hi,
It seems to be very much a slang term in Spanish.
Have a look at the discussion at http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=416012
It seems to be a bit of a puzzle, even for Spanish speakers,
It seems to be very much a slang term in Spanish.
Have a look at the discussion at http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=416012
It seems to be a bit of a puzzle, even for Spanish speakers,
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I wonder why "salao" isn't translated. If I hadn't read the link Clive gave, I would have imagined that the word could mean "crazy". "
I've been googling the text in other languages and in Spanish and Basque, that world still remains as "salao".
I've been googling the text in other languages and in Spanish and Basque, that world still remains as "salao".
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0 it holds a slang meaning, much like going "postal" does in the U.S. - workers bring guns to work and kill people, and it just so happens to occur at post offices more frequently than other industries (or at least at one time it did) 02 br
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00 salao is a tiny fishing island that rarely has good news to speak of. therefore, going/being salao is to be unlucky in fishing in
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00 salao is a tiny fishing island that rarely has good news to speak of. therefore, going/being salao is to be unlucky in fishing in
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01 cite 10 Pucca 12 cite 10 I've just looked for "salado" in my dictionary and it says: 12 br11 i 00 From wordreference.com 02 i 02 br
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10 5 MÉX [persona] Que es víctima de un maleficio - In Mexican, someone who is victim of a curse. 12 br
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YOU NO WHERE THE BOOK CAME FROM WAS MEXICO SO IT'S A SPANISH WORD
DUH
DUH00
thanks so much for this bit of info. my class at school is goin to read that very book and we got a worksheet where we have to look up salao. ive been combing the internet looking for the definiton thanks
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