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My impression is that “Domingo” is the standard word for “Sunday”, a day of the week. However, I have also seen “Domingão” being used to mean “Sunday”.

When I put both words through Google Translate, both are translated into English as “Sunday”, but when I translate “Sunday” into Portuguese, only “Domingo” is given.

What is the difference between the two words? Is “Domingão” just a more obscure spelling of “Domingo”, or is it more of a regional term?

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  • Domigão is a slang, in a free translate it means: Big Sunday.
    – Peixoto
    Feb 12, 2020 at 8:17
  • @Peixoto but why would you call a day big?
    – Axel Tong
    Feb 12, 2020 at 12:40
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    feeling that this day is good. Also, you can have in mind that there is a very popular TV show called "Domingão do Faustão" (free translation -> Faustão's Big Sunday), that it is a program with 3 or more hours during the Sunday afternoon...
    – Peixoto
    Feb 12, 2020 at 16:00
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    "Domingão" in Brasil is frequently used to describe the weekend futebol matches as a whole, similar to "jornada" in Portugal for the same thing. You ask why? The simple answer is derivational morphology, the "ão" suffix is very common and natural to the Portuguese language, it can be applied to virtually every word, and some end up lexicalized (this is the case especially in Brasil), similar to what's called "coining a term" in English.
    – bad_coder - on strike
    Feb 12, 2020 at 18:31
  • I may depends on the context, but in general I'd translate it to English as "Great Sunday" instead of "Big Sunday". By the way: Big/Great = Grande, so "Um Domingão" = "Um Grange Domingo" = A Great Sunday.
    – Luciano
    Feb 13, 2020 at 17:13

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"Domingo" means "Sunday". The suffix "ão" is an augmentative, so "domingão" literally means "big Sunday".

Calling something "big" may have different meanings, depending on the context. In this case probably the most relevant connotation is that of importance or affection, Sunday being a day often associated with fun and/or rest (BBQ, soccer, chilling, etc.) - the same way adding the "ão" to a person's name might be simply affectionate, unrelated to their size (e.g., "Vem aqui, Marcão." = "Come here, Marco my buddy.").

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    Can I use "ão" with any noun? Casão, vinhão, amorão, quejão? Is that all possible?
    – Alleção
    Feb 13, 2020 at 8:54
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    @Alleção At least colloquially, with many (if not most) of the masculine ones you can. But *amorão, for instance, is wrong, people say "amorzão". Also, there are many other augmentative suffixes (though only a few are frequently used), check, for example, here.
    – stafusa ♦
    Feb 13, 2020 at 10:43

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