Camões with palm oil - by Yeda Pessoa de Castro

This essay is equivalent to an “abecedary” enriched with original terms, with a relative minority of many others appropriated by them that transit, in a greater or lesser number of occurrences, in the different areas of the cultural multiuniverse of our Portuguese-Brazilian language. Its reading may surprise the common reader due to the fact that it presents several words listed as African that are used in everyday speech to describe everyday activities of various types; reveal to the people of terreiro the information sought about the origin and meaning of sacred terms; correct mistaken etymologies and add new ones; provide researchers with the means to broaden and deepen their scope of investigation by revealing data still hidden for historical or epistemological reasons; and what, after all, these data reveal even more to us when obtained in the study of vocabulary previously selected in semantic areas, such as what concerns sexuality, exposed on the body of the black woman as an object of use over time, her revolt contained in impropriety and its resilience based on ancestral religiosity.