Gisele Bündchen knows her Brazilian slang. Vanity Fair’s Style issue cover star gave VF a crash course in all things Portuguese for “Celebrity Slang School,” defining terms from “bah” (“Something you put before a sentence if you want to make something, like, extra”) to “tri legal” (“when something is extra awesome”).
Some of the words hit particularly close to home—like “pia,” which is a term for “boy,” but only in the south of Brazil. “I don’t think anywhere else in Brazil they would know what you’re talking about,” she says with a laugh. Some are slightly profane: “Putz,” Bündchen explains, “is like, putz, this broke or putz. Maybe kind of like s-h-i-” she cautiously spells, before getting censored. “I don’t know if I can say that word, but you know what I mean. Putz is like…it’s putz. It kind of is what it sounds like.”
If you’re flirting in Brazil, meanwhile, Bündchen knows what to say: gato or gata. “Gato means cat, and gata means a female cat, but we say gato and gata when someone is cute,” she says. “You show up you have a nice dress, you’re looking cute, you know? Gata. You would say it if you were flirting with someone.”
“Now I hope you speak Portuguese fluent after this. Just kidding,” Bündchen says at the end of the video. “I hope you learned something. Take care, have a beautiful day. Ciao.”