Descascar o abacaxi

Literally: To peel the pineapple

Example: “O gerente saiu de férias e deixou-me a descascar o abacaxi do orçamento.” — The manager went on vacation and left me the budget, a hard nut to crack.

English equivalent: A hard nut to crack

Origin: Abacaxi itself comes from Tupi, combining ibá (fruit) and ká'ti (strongly, pleasantly fragrant) — a word describing the fruit's own intense sweetness rather than anything related to difficulty. The idiom's logic is entirely physical: a pineapple's tough, spiky exterior makes it genuinely awkward and even mildly painful to peel by hand compared to almost any other common fruit, without special tools or practiced technique. No specific date or documented first use survives for the figurative phrase, but it plausibly grew out of ordinary, everyday kitchen experience — anyone who has actually had to peel a pineapple understands immediately why the same word extended naturally to any thorny, effortful problem, especially one someone else has left behind for you to deal with.