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Caralho (Portuguese: [kɐˈɾaʎu]) is a vulgar Portuguese-language word with a variety of meanings and uses. Literally, it is a noun referring to the penis, similar to English dick, but it is also used as an interjection expressing surprise, admiration, or dismay in both negative and positive senses in the same way as fuck in English. Caralho is also used in the intensifiers para caralho, placed after adjectives and sometimes adverbs and nouns to mean "very much" or "lots of", and do caralho, both of which are equivalent to the English vulgarities fucking and as fuck.
Caralho is cognate with Spanish carajo and caray, Galician carallo, Asturian carayu and Catalan carall. However, cognates have not been identified in other Iberian languages including Basque.[1] Italian has cazzo, a word with the same meaning, but attempts to link it to the same etymology fail on phonological grounds because the /r/ of carajo (or its absence in cazzo) remains unexplained, and no Latin phonological sequence develops as both /x/ in Spanish and /tts/ in Italian.
Records show that the word has been in use since the 10th century in Portugal, appearing on the "poems of insult and mockery" in the Galician-Portuguese lyric. After the Counter-Reformation, the word became obscene and its original sense meaning the erect penis became less common. Nowadays, caralho is commonly used as a dysphemism and in erotism. The word is also used in the abbreviation form of "crl" and "krl".