What does “valentão” mean in Brazilian Portuguese?
Primeiro dia de escola e encontro com o valentão
A2 Portuguese listening practice · Brazilian Portuguese · Curated for beginners
Brazilian Portuguese has a perfect word for the schoolyard bully: valentão, formed by adding the augmentative ending -ão to valente (“brave”). The grammar makes the literal meaning “big brave guy,” but the augmentative twists into mockery. A “big brave guy” is a posturing tough, a bully who isn’t actually brave.
This clip pairs the valentão setup with a surname-Burger pun: a kid named Burger gets asked vem com fritas? (“does it come with fries?”). The combination is exactly what a Brazilian audience expects in a schoolyard comedy: a swaggering bully, a deflating pun, a kid winning by being witty rather than tough.
Vocabulary frequency
How common is the vocabulary in this A2 Portuguese listening practice listening practice?
General Portuguese frequency
Spoken Portuguese frequency
Words above this video’s level
Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s A2 level.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-PT-BR 2012 (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.