Today we’re looking at some nominal collocations with mouth. This means that mouth is preceded by another noun.
Here are the first ten collocates of mouth in the COCA corpus (www.americancorpus.org):
1 | ||
2 | ||
3 | ||
4 | ||
5 | ||
6 | ||
7 | ||
8 | ||
9 | ||
10 |
The collocations with cave, river, tunnel, creek, harbor, and alley have very similar meanings. Not difficult to guess. Look at the pictures below.
river mouth
cave mouth
tunnel mouth
And here are a few examples:
• Within half an hour they reached a cave mouth in the canyon’s north wall.
• The gentle breeze out of the cave mouth kept the fumes from going in.
• Rough surf across the river mouth can be a trip killer.
• We motored to the river mouth and walked across the soggy, log-strewn beach.
• In a corner of the excavation she spotted a tunnel mouth, an entry to the network of storm drains beneath the city.
• A tunnel mouth led into a descending shaft.
• Fish entering the creek mouth do so primarily on the flooding tide.
• You may think we’re coming to a creek mouth in the mangroves, but it’s the beginning of a canal.
• The old fortification occupies a manmade island smack in the center of the harbor mouth.
• We nearly ran straight into the rocks at the harbor mouth.
• I passed Marlena’s wagon twenty feet from the alley mouth.
• The alley mouth darkens as a vehicle turns off the street.
In all cases, the Portuguese translation would probably be literal: “boca da caverna”, “boca do rio”, “boca do túnel”, “boca do riacho”, “boca do cais” and “boca do beco”. By the way, there’s a song by Djavan called “Na Boca do Beco” [https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na_Boca_do_Beco_(canção)].
So far, no problem. But let’s move on. How about these pictures for rosebud (the flower) and rosebud mouth? Do you see the connection?
rosebud mouth
red rosebud
rosebud mouth
Here are some examples:
• An emphatic no came from her tiny rosebud mouth.
• Miss Cullen was a frail little wisp of a woman with a rosebud mouth.
• … he often watched her in the restaurant office – balancing the books […] and pausing now and then to change the baby or pop a nipple into his rosebud mouth.
• A soft, pleasant breeze played in her short, light brown curls and lifted the baby’s wispy blond fuzz. He stirred, his rosebud mouth making sucking motions.
A possible translation, when rosebud mouth refers to children or babies could be “boquinha rosa”. These images were shown when I googled “boquinha rosa”. Pretty similar, eh?
But, for adults that would sound strange. So, maybe these would be better translations:
• E o que seria dele, João, depois? Nem mais uma beijoca na boquinha rubra e pequenina, nem mais um abraço ao voltar da escola, cansadinha…
• … trazia a cara toda branca e a boca vermelha.
• … as criadas alemãs, de olhos azuis, a boca vermelha e a pele branca, faziam-na esquecer, por instantes, do africano…
And here is the Google image for “boca vermelha”.
Another possible translation might be “lábios vermelhos”, but that would emphasize the color of the lips, rather than the shape of the mouth, which is the focus of the English collocation.
Our next collocation is metal mouth. Easy to understand, right? Look at the pictures and examples:
• Spending 1 1/2 years as a metal mouth ended up being a good investment.
• Daily I heard such cruel remarks as four-eyes, metal mouth, nerd, and teacher’s pet from the other kids.
• He is tired of being called “metal mouth” by his kindergarten classmates.
The most usual translation would be “sorriso metálico”, also a collocation in Portuguese.
By the way, did you notice that nominal collocations (noun + noun) in English can be translated as noun + preposition + noun or as adjectival collocations (noun + adjective) in Portuguese?
Noun + preposition + noun: “boca da caverna”, “boca do rio”, “boca do túnel”, “boca do riacho”, “boca do cais”, “boca do beco”.
Adjective + noun: “boquinha rosa”, “boca vermelha”, “boca rubra”, “sorriso metálico”.
Our last one is motor mouth. That will be easy to guess from the pictures below:
• Try shutting off his motor mouth by giving him the tried-and-true silent treatment.
• “Rush Hour” is the perfect vehicle for someone with a motor mouth. Chris Tucker can take a conversation from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in 2.3 seconds
• … you know, if there ever was a motor mouth it’s Jimmy Durante. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Durante)
Problem is, we don’t say “boca de motor” in Portuguese. We would probably say “matraca”, especially in the expression “Fecha essa matraca!”.
• Seu Raul não fala? – E por que não fecha a matraca?!
Well, in fact that was not the last one on the list. There is also smash mouth, but that is the name of a band!
• The Ben Stiller comedy about superhero misfits has an alternapop soundtrack crowned by the Smash Mouth hit All Star.
Hope you had fun! See you next month!
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Stella E. O. Tagnin professora associada do Departamento de Letras Modernas, FFLCH, da USP. Embora aposentada, continua orientando em nível de pós-graduação nas áreas de Tradução, Terminologia, Ensino e Aprendizagem, sempre com base na Lingüística de Corpus. É coordenadora do Projeto CoMET.
Quantas descobertas! O que a Linguística de Corpus não é capaz de descobrir, hein!
Achei o artigo muito proveitoso, didático e esclarecedor. Muito importante para quem traduz e ensina tradução.
Depois de três anos com aparelho ortodôntico, logo me vi no "metal mouth". 🙂 Um fato interessante que o texto deste mês destaca é a questão do SUBST+DE+SUBST em português que vira NOUN+NOUN em inglês. Um aluno desatento pode acabar usando *mouth of the river, *mouth of metal etc, que soam bem estranhas aos ouvidos de quem falem bem o idioma.