WHEN ONE’S LIFE IS IN DANGER

This paper aims to explain the origin of the idiom “correr risco de vida” (when one’s life is in danger). It originates from a concrete fact, whose use is very old in Portuguese: kings used to record names of people to whom they had given benefits or deserved a position or land. When someone fell in disfavor with the king or betrayed him, he would cross the disloyal person’s name off the book (cross it out, strike it off the book). This would mean that the person no more existed tom the king. However, the reference of use of registered names on the Book of Life is found in the Bible, The Exodus, when Moses asks God to cross his name off the book He had written. By metaphor, both the verb riscar (which shifted to arriscar) and the noun risco were grammaticalized, having more abstract meanings: “endanger life” and “danger”, respectively.