Cão chupando manga

Hello, dear foreign… Are you ready for one more episode on the never-ending saga of the weirdness of Brazilian expressions? Then, buckle up, cause the next one is one of the most confusing/senseless/absurd ones so far, and after all the cows and monkeys, this is quite an accomplishment, don’t you think?

Without stepping too far from the animals, our expression today is “cão chupando manga”, or “dog sucking mango” if you may, and I hope you mayn’t. This one requires a bit of explanation every step of the way, but let’s start with the actual meaning: someone that is devoid of beauty, aka ugly, or a situation that went ugly, or someone who’s pissed off and ready to turn things ugly – key word here being ugly. No one here expecting any sense anymore, right?

I’m sure whenever you think of a dog, the first image in your head is a puppy, as cute as they come, maybe a flagging tail and a never-inside-the-mouth tongue. But for some reason – and maybe one day I’ll write a post about that too –, one of the names for the devil in Portuguese language is dog. Now, highly unfair, I’m aware, but not the only one… You have the devil (o diabo), the demon (o demônio), the horned (o chifrudo), the left-handed (o canhoto), the mangy (o tinhoso), the bad thing (o coisa ruim), the stabbed who doesn’t bleed (o esfaqueado que não sangra), the red skin (o pele vermelha), the seven skins (o sete peles), the one who the jellybean doesn’t stick to the roof of the mouth (aquele que a jujuba não gruda no céu da boca)(???????), and an infinite list of options to mention the bad guy from hell. But they’re not our focus today, the one that interests us at this moment is actually dog.

So, we have the devil sucking a mango, which brings us to the next step, the sucking.

Mangoes are really popular in Brazil, in the town I grew up there’s ten mango threes for each habitant, and it’s very common for kids to climb the mango trees and eat the fruit from up there. Now, even though you would think the activity appropriate here is eat, we Brazilians beg to differ, and the correct way to consume a mango is sucking. You hear me, you peel it with your teeth and go for it as you were passionately kissing your favorite person. No exaggerations here, that’s the way to do if you want to appreciate the mango in all its potential.

Now, why the devil enjoying a mango in the very appropriate way would mean an ugly person or situation? The most probable reason is because the whole expression was, at the beginning, “dog sucking unripe mango” (cão chupando manga verde), and the reason for that is the devil himself being already a not good-looking figure, eating an unripe mango, which is as sour as a lime, would make a face, so double ugly.

As for the origin of it, it’s said to had come from the northeast region of the country (those people are very creative with their expressions, they have an entire glossary of their own), but no one knows exactly when or how, it’s been there as long as I can remember.

And you can see not even the dogs get away with the usage in expressions, and I can assure you this is not the only one where the man’s best friend shows up. I can’t wait to bring more of them to you, dear foreign, and I hope you’ll come back to check them out.

Until then,

expressionada.