At the doctor’s and in hospital in Portuguese

The thirty-first entry is os cuidados paliativos, and the plural is not a quirk of that phrase: it is how Portuguese builds the whole idea. Os cuidados is a countable noun with a singular behind it, um cuidado, and it appears in the plural wherever a service is meant — os cuidados de base, os cuidados intensivos, os cuidados continuados. English does the opposite. « Care » in this sense is uncountable: it takes no article and no plural, so it is palliative care, intensive care and primary care, and never a care or two cares. The trap is that « cares » does exist and has nothing to do with medicine. « A care » is a worry, and the plural survives almost only in fixed phrases — « without a care in the world », « she hasn’t a care ». So os cuidados paliativos becomes « palliative care », the noun standing bare, and a report promising somebody « palliative cares » has written about their anxieties instead. Two words in the same family do count, and both are on this list: « a carer » and « a care home ».