geringonça

• gerigonça

Borrowed from Spanish jerigonza, from Old Occitan gergons, from Old French jargon. Doublet of jargão.

The political sense was coined by CDS – People's Party leader Paulo Portas in a speech to the Assembly on 10 November 2015 in reference to the XXI Constitutional Government of Portugal, formed by the Socialist Party through a confidence and supply arrangement with other leftist parties, "snubbing" the Social Democrats, who had won a plurality of both votes and seats. The term originally was originally pejorative, with media neutral or favorable to the new government simply not giving it any special name or calling it frente/governo da(s) esquerda(s) (literally, “front/government of the left(s)”), but the term has since been embraced by supporters of said government, and evolved to become a staple of Portuguese political jargon (English jargon coincidentally being a cognate of geringonça).

• Hyphenation: ge‧rin‧gon‧ça

geringonça f (plural geringonças)

1. contraption (complicated and precarious machine)

   Synonym: engenhoca

2. slang (language outside of conventional usage)

   Synonyms: gíria, calão

3. (Portuguese politics) government formed by minority parties in order to prevent a party which won a relative majority from governing instead
   • 2015 November 10, Paulo Portas, parliamentary debates (Assembly of the Portuguese Republic):

     Não é um governo, é uma geringonça. Não é uma coligação, isso já se viu. Tão-pouco será um acordo, porque haverá vários. Supõe-se que para haver vários, é porque nenhum será exatamente igual. Se nenhum for exatamente igual, é porque as partes não se comprometem da mesma forma. É tal a dificuldade em conciliar o inconciliável, que até nas moções de rejeição tiveram dificuldade em fazer uma só.
     Temo que a Geringonça deixe Portugal — a sua credibilidade, a sua economia, a sorte dos nossos compatriotas — à mercê das reuniões semestrais do Comité Central [do PCP] na [Rua] Soeiro Pereira Gomes.

     It is not a government, it is a contraption. It is not a coalition, that much was seen. Neither will it be an agreement, as there will be several. It is supposed that for there to be several, it is because none will be exactly the same. If none are exactly the same, it is because its parts do not compromise themselves in the same way. The difficulty is such in conciling the unconciliable, that even in the motions of rejection there is hardship in making only one.
     I fear that the Contraption will leave Portugal — its credibility, its economy, the fortune of our countrymen — in the hands of the semiannual rendezvous of the Central Committee [of the Portuguese Communist Party] in Soeiro Pereira Gomes [Street].