Where Does the Expression “Pagar o Pato” Come From?

In Brazilian Portuguese, “pagar o pato” is an idiomatic expression used when someone ends up suffering the consequences of something they did not cause, taking the blame for someone else’s actions, or bearing a loss that should have fallen on another person.

But why a duck?

The answer is less certain than the expression itself. “Pagar o pato” is centuries old and has a close Spanish counterpart, “pagar el pato.” Both expressions were already documented by the sixteenth century. What remains uncertain is how the duck became associated with the idea of paying for someone else’s mistake.

Several explanations have been proposed over the years. Some connect the expression to a story recorded by the Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini. Others associate it with an old game involving a duck. Another hypothesis suggests a possible connection between pato (“duck”) and pacto (“pact” or “agreement”).

The problem is that none of these explanations can be established as the definitive origin.

And that distinction matters. The history of an expression is not necessarily the same thing as the most entertaining story told about it.

What does “pagar o pato” mean?

In contemporary Portuguese, “pagar o pato” means to suffer the consequences of something caused by someone else, take responsibility for a problem one did not create, or bear an unfair cost.

The expression can describe relatively ordinary situations: an employee may “pay the pato” for a colleague’s mistake, a family member may bear the consequences of someone else’s decision, or an innocent person may become responsible for a problem they did not cause.

The underlying idea is always similar: the consequences fall on the wrong person.

What is much harder to explain is why Portuguese speakers came to express that idea with a duck.

The expression was already in use in the sixteenth century

One of the earliest known Portuguese records of “pagar o pato” is associated with the work of Francisco de Sá de Miranda, a major Portuguese poet of the Renaissance who lived from 1481 to 1558.

The presence of the expression in sixteenth-century Portuguese literature establishes an important point: “pagar o pato” is not a modern Brazilian invention. It was already part of the Portuguese language centuries ago.

But an early written record does not necessarily reveal the moment an expression was created.

Idioms often circulate orally before they appear in surviving documents. The first example we can find may therefore represent only the earliest evidence that has survived, rather than the actual birth of the expression.

That is why historians and linguists distinguish between the first known record and the origin.

The two are not necessarily the same.

Spain has a remarkably similar expression

The investigation becomes more intriguing when we look beyond Portuguese.

Spanish has the expression “pagar el pato,” with essentially the same meaning: to bear the consequences of something, particularly when the person suffering them is not the one who should be held responsible.

The Spanish expression is also old, with documented examples dating back to the sixteenth century.

The parallel between Portuguese and Spanish raises an obvious question: did both languages inherit the expression from a shared Iberian tradition?

It is a possibility, particularly given the long historical interaction between the two languages. But the similarity alone cannot establish exactly where the expression originated or which form came first.

What the evidence does show is that the “duck” expression was already circulating in the Iberian linguistic world centuries ago.

That makes some modern explanations less convincing if they claim to identify a single, recent event as the moment the expression was born.

The story associated with Poggio Bracciolini

One of the best-known explanations connects “pagar o pato” to a story found in the Facetiae, a collection of humorous and satirical tales by the Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini, who lived from 1380 to 1459.

One of the stories involves a woman, her husband, and a seller of ducks. A peculiar bargain is made involving the bird, and the situation eventually results in the husband having to pay for it.

The resemblance to the modern meaning of “pagar o pato” is striking: someone ends up bearing a cost connected to a situation they did not create in the ordinary sense.

The story therefore became an attractive explanation for the expression.

The Brazilian philologist João Ribeiro, among others, connected the Portuguese expression with Bracciolini’s tale in his work on Portuguese phraseology.

But there is an important problem.

A story that resembles the meaning of an idiom is not, by itself, proof that the story created the idiom.

To establish that connection historically, we would need evidence showing that Bracciolini’s tale actually gave rise to the expression and tracing how that connection entered Portuguese or Spanish usage.

That evidence is insufficient.

So the Bracciolini story is best treated as a proposed explanation, not as an established fact.

The old “duck game” theory

Another traditional explanation connects the expression with an old activity known as “correr o pato,” or “running the duck.”

Historical accounts describe forms of entertainment or competition involving participants attempting to seize or remove a duck, sometimes while mounted on horseback. Similar practices were known in parts of the Iberian world and later appeared in Brazil.

According to the theory, someone who failed in the contest might have had to pay for the duck.

From there, the expression supposedly developed into “pagar o pato” — literally, paying for the duck — and eventually acquired its figurative meaning.

The explanation is appealing because it creates a straightforward connection between the literal animal and the figurative expression.

But again, plausibility is not proof.

Evidence that such a game existed does not demonstrate that the idiom originated from it. To establish the theory, we would need historical evidence connecting the practice specifically to the emergence and early use of the expression.

That connection has not been demonstrated conclusively.

Could “pato” have come from “pacto”?

A different line of investigation looks not at an actual duck, but at the word itself.

Some etymological discussions have proposed a relationship between pato (“duck”) and pacto (“pact,” “agreement”). The idea is that the expression might have developed through a popular or phonetic alteration rather than originally referring to an animal.

This possibility has appeared in historical discussions of the expression and has been associated with the work of the influential Catalan philologist Joan Coromines.

If that explanation were correct, the duck in the modern expression could be the result of linguistic evolution rather than the original image.

But this hypothesis also has limitations.

There is no sufficient evidence to establish it as the definitive explanation for the expression’s origin. A similarity between two forms, even when linguistically possible, does not automatically demonstrate that one developed from the other.

The hypothesis is therefore worth mentioning, but not presenting as settled etymology.

Why is it so difficult to establish the origin?

The difficulty is not unusual.

Idiomatic expressions are often born in spoken language. They can spread for generations without anyone recording who first used them or why a particular image became associated with a particular idea.

By the time the expression appears in a surviving document, its original context may already have disappeared.

That appears to be part of the problem with “pagar o pato.”

We have evidence that the expression was established by the sixteenth century. We have several explanations for the duck. But we do not have a complete documentary chain connecting one specific event to the birth of the idiom.

This leaves us with an important distinction:

We know the expression is old. We do not know with certainty why it was created.

The first record is not necessarily the beginning

This distinction is especially important when discussing expressions such as “pagar o pato.”

Finding the expression in a sixteenth-century text does not mean that someone invented it in the sixteenth century.

It could have been used orally much earlier.

Nor does the existence of an older story automatically mean that the story produced the expression. A tale can resemble an idiom because both reflect a similar idea, without one necessarily being the source of the other.

Historical research has to resist the temptation to connect two interesting facts simply because they fit together neatly.

That is one reason the most responsible answer to an origin question can sometimes be less satisfying than a simple story.

From old expression to modern Portuguese

Whatever its original motivation, “pagar o pato” survived.

The expression was carried into Brazilian Portuguese along with many other elements of the language brought from Portugal. Over time, it remained recognizable and retained its figurative meaning.

Today, virtually no one needs to know the history of the expression to understand it.

When a Brazilian says that someone “pagou o pato,” the listener does not normally imagine an actual duck being bought or a historical game being played.

The expression has become an established idiom whose meaning is understood as a whole.

This is one of the fascinating features of language: words and expressions can survive long after the circumstances that originally inspired them have been forgotten.

What other languages reveal

The story becomes even more interesting when “pagar o pato” is placed alongside expressions from other languages.

Spanish, as we have seen, has “pagar el pato,” almost identical to the Portuguese expression.

French takes a completely different image. “Payer les pots cassés,” literally “to pay for the broken pots,” means to bear the consequences of a situation that has gone wrong.

English has expressions such as “take the fall,” which can refer to accepting blame or suffering consequences, particularly when responsibility properly belongs elsewhere.

These expressions should not automatically be assumed to have a common origin.

Instead, they demonstrate something broader about language.

Different cultures often need to express similar human experiences — blame, responsibility, loss, unfair consequences — but they turn those abstract ideas into different concrete images.

A duck.

Broken pots.

A fall.

The images differ, but the human situation is recognizable.

That makes idioms valuable cultural evidence. They show not only what people say, but also the kinds of images their languages have preserved.

So, where does “pagar o pato” really come from?

The most accurate answer is also the most cautious:

the exact origin of “pagar o pato” has not been conclusively established.

We know that the expression was already in use in the sixteenth century, and that Spanish had the closely related “pagar el pato.” We also know of several longstanding explanations for its origin, including the story associated with Poggio Bracciolini, the theory involving an old duck game, and the possible connection between pato and pacto.

But none of these explanations has enough evidence to be presented as proven fact.

What can be said with confidence is that the expression belongs to a long-established Iberian linguistic tradition and came to mean bearing a consequence, cost, or blame that should have fallen on someone else.

The duck, however, remains the unresolved part of the story.

And perhaps that is the most honest conclusion: we know that people were already “paying the duck” centuries ago; what we cannot say with certainty is exactly why the duck was chosen in the first place.

Sources and References

• Sá de Miranda, Francisco de. Works from the sixteenth century containing early Portuguese evidence associated with the expression.
• Ribeiro, João. Frases Feitas. A classic study of Portuguese and Brazilian phraseology, including discussion of “pagar o pato” and the Bracciolini hypothesis.
• Bracciolini, Poggio. Facetiae. Fifteenth-century collection of humorous tales containing the story traditionally associated with one explanation for the expression.
• Coromines, Joan. Etymological studies cited in discussions concerning the possible relationship between pato and pacto.
• Câmara Cascudo, Luís da. Historical and folkloric studies discussing “pagar o pato” and the tradition of correr o pato.