Pagar o pato

Literally: To pay the duck

Example: “Os colegas faltaram, e fui eu que paguei o pato.” — My colleagues skipped work, and I was the one who took the rap.

English equivalent: To take the rap

Origin: No source settles on a confirmed origin, though the most frequently repeated theory points to an old public game once played in Portuguese towns: a live duck was tied to a pole, and players took turns trying to free it in a single attempt; anyone who failed had to pay, in money, for the sacrificed bird. That specific historical practice isn't itself well documented, leaving the theory more plausible than proven. A second, related family of explanations ties the duck more loosely to festival customs and oral tradition across the Iberian Peninsula, where a duck functioned as a stand-in for an unpaid debt, with whoever covered its cost symbolically settling an obligation that wasn't originally theirs. Both threads converge on the same modern sense: paying a price, literal or figurative, for a mess someone else actually made.