Enfiar o pé na jaca: literally "to stick your foot in the jackfruit"
This expression means to go overboard, lose control, or exceed your limits. Its original meaning was specifically about drinking too much, but today it covers any kind of excess: overeating, overspending, crossing a line in behavior, or just going way too far with something.
Where does it come from?
The idiom doesn’t actually come from jaca (jackfruit). The original word was jacá, a type of bamboo or vine basket strapped to the side of pack animals to carry stuff. Muleteers traveling long distances would stop along the way to drink. When drunk, they’d stumble trying to mount their animals and literally get their foot stuck in the jacá.
Over time, jacá fell out of common use and was replaced by jaca, a word all of us Brazilians know well. The expression gained wider visibility with the 2006 TV soap opera Pé na Jaca.
The core meaning is still excess of any kind. It’s most naturally used when someone:
- drinks more than they should
- eats way past their limit
Let’s get to the examples:
Parece domingo quando a gente enfia o pé na jaca.
It looks like Sundays when we go overboard with the food.
Tanta comida. É para enfiar o pé na jaca, né?
So much food. It’s to go overboard, isn’t?
Quando a gente enfia o pé na jaca, tem que ser os dois pés.
When we go overboard, it has to be all the way out (lit. it has to be with two feet).
Dia de enfiar o pé na jaca.
A day to go overboard(with anything, food, drinks, etc)!
Vou enfiar o pé na jaca na festa hoje à noite.
I’ll go overboard at the party tonight.
Eu tinha superado a cachaça, mas agora tô enfiando o pé na jaca de novo.
I had overcame the cachaça1, but now I am indulging in it again.
Aquela festa de Natal que você enfiou o pé na jaca e caiu na piscina.
That Christmas Party when you drank too much and fell into the pool.
Ela enfiou o pé na jaca outra vez.
She drank too much again.
Enfiei o pé na jaca com uns amigos e perdi a voz .
I drank too much with some friends and I lost my voice.
Na festa, eu enfiei o pé na jaca legal, então estou um pouco desorientado.
At the party, I drank too much, so I am bit disoriented.
That’s it! Hope you liked, as usual I advise you to review the sentences using the flashcards below. Te vejo no próximo post!
Test yourself
Footnotes
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A very strong drink derived from sugarcane. ↩