Como pedir a ementa no restaurante

What does “ementa” mean in a Portuguese restaurant?

In Portugal, the card listing dishes, drinks and prices is the ementa. Pode trazer a ementa, por favor? is the phrase that gets it to your table. Say menu instead and you will be understood perfectly well, but ementa is the everyday Portuguese word. Cross the Atlantic and it changes again: in Brazil the same card is the cardápio.

Ementa is not really a food word at all — its older senses are “a brief note,” “a summary,” “a list,” which is why the summary of a law is also called an ementa. The Brazilian cardápio, by contrast, was invented on purpose: Antônio de Castro Lopes coined it in his 1889 Neologismos indispensáveis e barbarismos dispensáveis, trying to push the French menu out of Portuguese. That one caught on; his convescote for “picnic” never did.