/esh-kee-sea-two/
🚫 English speakers think: Exquisite (refined, elegant, beautiful)
✅ Actually means: Weird, strange, or odd
This is a high-stakes adjective. If you tell a Portuguese cook their dinner was esquisito, you aren’t complimenting their refined palate—you are telling them the food tasted weird.
Example in Context
“Este queijo sabe um bocado esquisito.” → “This cheese tastes a bit weird.”
How to say “Exquisite”
If you want to be polite and fancy, the word you are looking for is requintado.
- Este vinho é requintado. → “This wine is exquisite.”
Related False Friend
Food vocabulary is a minefield here. Just like esquisito doesn’t mean exquisite, make sure you don’t confuse your office supplies with your lunch. If you ask for a pasta in a restaurant, you’re asking for a folder, not spaghetti (they call it ‘massa’ instead of what we English speakers call pasta, the food).
See Also
If you think this one is tricky, wait until you see the danger of confusing a cold with… well, you’ll see: Constipação.
Memory Trick
Exquisite things are beautiful. Esquisito things make you squint and say “Yikes.”