“Exceptional”: Pelé becomes an adjective and enters the Portuguese vocabulary

Since Wednesday “Pelé” is the newest word in the Michaelis dictionary, the most used in the Lusophone world. It means: “Incomparable, unique, out of the ordinary”. The initiative is the result of a campaign promoted by the Foundation that bears the name of the Brazilian champion, which has collected 125,000 signatures

Pelé enters the Portuguese vocabulary as an adjective. Since Wednesday “Pelé” is the newest word in the Michaelis dictionary which does not actually have the official value of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française or the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española, nor the historical prestige of the Oxford English Dictionary, the Deutsches Wörterbuch initiated by the Brothers Grimm or our Accademia della Crusca. It is however the most used in the Lusophone world, as there is not yet an instrument with similar support from the national academies of the nine countries where Portuguese is an official language. 280 million people, therefore, will be formally authorized to use expressions such as “the Pelé of tennis” or “the Pelé of quantum physics”.