calafate

From Spanish calafate (“barberry”).

calafate (plural calafates)

1. The barberry, shrubs belonging to the genus Berberis.

• Rhymes: -atʃi, -ati
• Hyphenation: ca‧la‧fa‧te

calafate m (plural calafates)

2. (nautical) caulker
   • 1880, Cesário Verde, O Sentimento dum Ocidental, Ave Marias (section 1); republished as Silva Pinto, editor, O Livro de Cesario Verde, Lisbon: Typographia Elzeveriana, 1887, lines 19–20:

     Voltam os calafates, aos magotes, / De jaquetão ao ombro, enfarruscados, secos[.]

     The caulkers return in heaps. / With their jackets on their shoulders, blackened, dry[.]

• “calafate”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2025
• “calafate”, in Dicio – Dicionário Online de Português (in Portuguese), São Paulo: 7Graus, 2009–2025
• “calafate”, in Dicionário infopédia da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Porto: Porto Editora, 2003–2025
• “calafate”, in Michaelis Dicionário Brasileiro da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), São Paulo: Editora Melhoramentos, 2015–2025
• “calafate”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2025

• IPA^(key): /kalaˈfate/ [ka.laˈfa.t̪e]
• Rhymes: -ate
• Syllabification: ca‧la‧fa‧te

calafate m or f by sense (plural calafates)

2. caulker

   Synonyms: calafateador, calafateadora

4. (Chile, Argentina) barberry

   Synonym: michay

• “calafate”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024