Portagee

//ˈpɔɹtəɡi// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A person from Portugal or a person of Portuguese descent. dated, derogatory, ethnic, slur

    "She lives in New Bedford, and her dad's not around much and her mum calls her boyfriend a Portagee, a fuckin' greenhorn, and she says, Ma, he's 3rd generation, but her mum just rolls her eyes and fixes a drink, fills her glass with ice from the icemaker they have, pours some bourbon from the bottle on the glass-and-mirror shelf above the sink, turns on one of the gold seahorse faucets just a swoosh, and goes into the living room with the paper."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Portuguese. dated, derogatory, ethnic, slur

    "Did you hear about the man who was half Portagee and half Italian? He made himself an offer he couldn't understand."

Example

More examples

"She lives in New Bedford, and her dad's not around much and her mum calls her boyfriend a Portagee, a fuckin' greenhorn, and she says, Ma, he's 3rd generation, but her mum just rolls her eyes and fixes a drink, fills her glass with ice from the icemaker they have, pours some bourbon from the bottle on the glass-and-mirror shelf above the sink, turns on one of the gold seahorse faucets just a swoosh, and goes into the living room with the paper."

Etymology

Variant of Portuguese, or perhaps back-formation from Portuguese taking it as a plural.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.