Portugueseestar com água na boca
Meaning: Feel eager anticipation or desire, especially for food or something pleasant.
Literally: To have water in the mouth
Example: “O cheiro do bolo deixou-nos com água na boca.” — The smell of the cake made our mouths water.
English equivalent: To make one's mouth water
Origin: Água and boca both descend directly from Latin — aqua and bucca — and the idiom describes a real, involuntary physiological reflex rather than any historical event or story: seeing or even just imagining something appetizing genuinely triggers increased salivation before a single bite is taken. Because the reflex itself is universal and immediately recognizable to anyone who has ever felt hungry looking at food, versions of the same image appear independently across many unrelated languages — Italian's acqua in bocca uses identical wording for an entirely different meaning, keeping quiet rather than craving food, a reminder that shared physical vocabulary doesn't guarantee a shared idiom.
Equivalents in other languages
French: Mettre l'eau à la bouche Literally: To put water in the mouth
English: make one's mouth water
More Portuguese idioms
- Viajar na maionese To talk nonsense or drift off into your own dream world.
- Chutar o balde To stop caring and let everything go — unlike the English, nobody dies.
- Enfiar o pé na jaca To overdo it wildly, especially with food or drink.
- Pisar na bola To mess up or let someone down.
- Encher linguiça To pad something out with filler to take up space or time.
- Nem que a vaca tussa No way; under no circumstances.
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Words that look familiar in another language but mean something else entirely.
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