Engolir sapos

Meaning: To put up with unpleasant things without complaining.

Language: Portuguese

Literally: To swallow frogs

Category: Animals

Origin: "Engolir" traces through Latin ingullire to gula, the throat — the same root that gives Portuguese gula, gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins. No single theory settles where the specific frog (or toad) image came from. One points to the Old Testament's second plague of Egypt, an overwhelming infestation of frogs sent as divine punishment, treating the animal as an unwelcome, forced imposition from the start. A second reaches for medieval European folklore, where toads carried strong associations with witchcraft and repugnance, making them a natural stand-in for anything foul that had to be accepted against one's will. The expression spread through Portuguese colonization into Brazilian Portuguese, where it took firm hold by the 1800s, and close equivalents exist across Europe — French avaler des couleuvres (swallowing grass snakes), Italian ingoiare un rospo, Spanish tragarse un sapo — suggesting the underlying image of choking down something repulsive rather than reacting was widely shared long before any one language fixed on frogs specifically.