What do “molhado” and “seco” mean in Portuguese?

In Portuguese, molhado means “wet” and seco means “dry” — one of the first opposite pairs worth locking in. The neat catch: seco is a plain adjective straight from Latin siccus, but molhado is really the past participle of the verb molhar (“to wet, to soak”). So where English just says “wet,” Portuguese literally says “wetted” — something got made wet.

Both agree with their noun, so feminine tinta (“paint”) gives tinta molhada / tinta seca, and you’d say chão molhado (“wet floor”) or roupa seca (“dry clothes”). Molhar descends from Vulgar Latin molliāre, “to soften/soak,” from Latin mollis (“soft”) — the same root behind Spanish mojado and French mouillé. Because molhado is a participle, the verb is always nearby: molhei a camisa (“I got the shirt wet”). Seco, by contrast, pairs with secar (“to dry”): a roupa já secou, “the clothes have dried.”