dar um jeito

Literally: To give a way/trick

Example: “O carro não pegava, mas o vizinho deu um jeito com um arame.” — The car wouldn't start, but the neighbor rigged something up with a bit of wire.

Origin: Jeito traces to Latin jactus, from the verb jacere, to throw or fling — its original sense in Portuguese was closer to "a way of moving one's body" or "a particular manner of doing something." That underlying sense of active, physical launching toward a goal survives directly in the modern idiom: dar um jeito describes not passively waiting for the ideal solution to present itself, but actively throwing yourself at whatever workable option is available right now, with whatever limited resources and time you actually have. The phrase underlies the broader, more culturally loaded jeitinho brasileiro — a distinctly Brazilian reputation for improvised, flexible problem-solving that gets formally documented in sociological writing from 1982 onward, though the underlying instinct for practical improvisation is understood to run through Brazilian culture well before that academic label was ever applied to it.