puta, cabra 🔊

Usage examples

• Cala a boca, puta!
  Shut your mouth, bitch!
• Essa cabra não tem vergonha nenhuma.
  That bitch has absolutely no shame.
• Vai tomar no cu, sua puta safada!
  Go fuck yourself, you filthy bitch!

Etymology

Puta derives from Latin puta, the feminine form of putus ("clean, trimmed"), which shifted in Vulgar Latin to denote a woman of loose morals, likely via the sense of one who "offers herself." The word is attested across all Ibero-Romance languages with consistent sexual meaning. Cabra is the standard Portuguese and Spanish word for "goat" (Latin capra); its use as a gendered insult — implying a promiscuous or disreputable woman — is a semantic extension documented in both European Portuguese and several Brazilian regional dialects, paralleling similar goat-based insults in other Mediterranean cultures.

Cultural notes

Puta is the primary term here and is one of the most widely used profanities in the Portuguese-speaking world, functioning both as a specific insult (whore, prostitute) and as a general-purpose intensifier in exclamations such as puta que pariu ("what the fuck"). In Brazil it appears constantly in everyday heated speech; in Portugal it carries a slightly more formal edge of contempt. Cabra as an insult is more regionally concentrated: in northeastern Brazil and rural Portugal it is applied to women deemed disreputable, though in some northeastern Brazilian dialects cabra can also simply mean "person" or "fellow" with no pejorative force, so context is essential. Both terms are strongly offensive in formal or family settings.

Same meaning, other languages

Accuracy

86% of 21 voters say this translation is accurate.