The name of the Brazilian footballer, who died in December, has since become one of the 167,000 words in the dictionary of common names of the Portuguese language and its 265 million speakers around the world.
A little more in the legend. Pelé, the nickname of Edson Arantes do Nascimento, considered by many to be the greatest footballer of all time, who died on December 29 at the age of 82, has now entered the Portuguese language dictionary twice. In addition to its own name, the Michaelis dictionary formalized on Wednesday the entry of the word “pelé” (without the capital letter) in its pages, synonymous with “exceptional, incomparable, uniqueThe Brazilian Academy of Letters, which governs Portuguese in Brazil, where 215 million Portuguese speakers live, has not yet introduced the word ‘pelé’ in its digital version, however.
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Everything was born after the very serious proposal of the Pelé Foundation, which even launched a campaign in this direction, hoping to collect the maximum number of signatures from the inhabitants. “He is the Pelé of basketball”, “she is the Pelé of tennis” or “she is the Pelé of Brazilian dramaturgy”, could we read in particular in Portuguese for the promotion of this campaign. It is true that these expressions have become common, but in Brazil, the word “pelé” today goes far beyond the framework of sport where it is synonymous with “excellence”.
This is not the first time that a football player’s name has entered everyday vocabulary, although often confined to sports jargon: one can thus think in particular of madjer, panenka or even papinade. So many technical gestures that we owe to… Rabah Madjer, Algerian footballer, the Czech Antonin Panenka, or even Jean-Pierre Papin.
A project supported by the media and his former club
The project is supported by the club of the country’s icon, the Santos Futebol Clube, and the Globo group, giant of the Brazilian media. The official campaign website even goes so far as to offer a definition for the word: “Pele. [Adjectif] 1. greatest of all. 2. size reference 3. unequaled. 4. synonymous with excellence 5. unique”.
In the online dictionary, which can be consulted by some 265 million Portuguese speakers around the world, we can now read alongside the word “pelé” : “Something or someone out of the ordinary, something or someone whose quality, value or superiority cannot be compared to anything or anyone else, such as Pelé®, nickname of Edson Arantes do Nascimento (1940-2022), considered the greatest sportsman of all time”. Michaelis also gives some examples of its use: “He is the skin of basketball”, “she is the skin of Brazilian drama”, “he is the skin of medicine”.
We could add “unforgettable” because four months after the death of the king of football, a minute of silence is still observed in his homage in all the stadiums before all the matches of the Brazilian championship.