Desenrascanço, Desenrascar & Desenrasca: The Portuguese Art of “MacGyvering”

“When you somehow manage to make it work”

If enrascar is getting yourself into a difficult situation, then Desenrascanço Desenrascar & Desenrasca will be your best words to figure out how to get yourself out of it.

And this is where things get very Portuguese. Desenrascanço describes the ability to find a solution when things don’t go according to plan – often with limited time, limited resources and perhaps a healthy dose of improvisation.

There isn’t one perfect English translation. And if it were a word, “MacGyvering”* would probably come pretty close! 😉

But the most comon way to roughly translate it would be, depending on the situation, resourcefulness, improvisation, finding a workaround, making do or simply figuring something out.

*See below if you don’t know who MacGyver is.

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Desenrascar, Desenrascanço & Desenrasca

These words are closely related, but they don’t quite do the same job.

• desenrascar → to find a way to solve a problem or make something work
• desenrascar-se → to manage; to find a way out of a difficult situation
• desenrascanço → resourcefulness; the ability to improvise and find a solution

There is also a very useful expression you’ll hear in everyday Portuguese:

• isto/isso desenrasca → this/that will do; this/that will work; this/that will get us by

💡 Think of the difference like this:

Word	Idea
Desenrascar	Finding a way to solve a problem or make something work
Desenrascar-se	Managing or finding a way out of a difficult situation
Desenrascanço	The skill or ability to improvise and find a solution
Desenrasca	A present-tense form of desenrascar, as in isto/isso desenrasca

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Desenrascar: finding a way

The verb desenrascar means to find a way to solve a problem or make something work. You’ll very often hear it in the reflexive form desenrascar-se, meaning to manage or find a way out of a difficult situation.

For example:

“Não te preocupes. Eu desenrasco-me.”
(Don’t worry. I’ll manage / I’ll figure something out.)

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll find the perfect solution. It’s more about managing somehow.

You might not have everything you need. You might not have much time. The original plan might have gone completely wrong. But somehow, you find a way.

And desenrascar can also be used when you’re talking about making something work with what you have.

For example:

“Não temos a ferramenta certa, mas isto desenrasca.”
(We don’t have the right tool, but this’ll do.)

Here, desenrasca isn’t a separate noun. It’s simply the present-tense form of desenrascar:

isto/isso desenrasca → this/that will do; this/that will work; this/that will get us by

The idea is that something isn’t necessarily the perfect solution, but it works well enough for the situation.

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Desenrascanço: the Portuguese art of improvising

Desenrascanço is the noun, and it’s probably the most culturally interesting of the three.

It describes that wonderfully Portuguese ability to look at a problem and think, “Right… how are we going to sort this out?”

Perhaps something is broken, something is missing, a plan has fallen apart or you simply don’t have the right equipment. Instead of giving up, you improvise.

That’s desenrascanço.

It can be a genuinely useful skill, but it can also be said with a little humour or irony. Sometimes a solution is wonderfully clever. Sometimes it is held together with whatever happened to be lying around!

📌 Example:

“Foi preciso muito desenrascanço para resolver o problema.”
(It took a lot of ingenuity/improvisation to solve the problem.)

Desenrascanço – the Portuguese art of improvising

Desenrascanço is the noun, and it’s probably the most culturally interesting of the three.

It describes that wonderfully Portuguese ability to look at a problem and think, “Right… how are we going to sort this out?”

Perhaps something is broken, something is missing, a plan has fallen apart or you simply don’t have the right equipment. Instead of giving up, you improvise.

That’s desenrascanço.

It can be a genuinely useful skill, but it can also be said with a little humour or irony. Sometimes a solution is wonderfully clever. Sometimes it is held together with whatever happened to be lying around!

📌 Example:

“Foi preciso muito desenrascanço para resolver o problema.”
(It took a lot of ingenuity/improvisation to solve the problem.)

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Desenrascanço in everyday Portuguese life

One of the reasons I love words like desenrascanço is that they tell you something about the culture as well as the language.

Portuguese people don’t always expect everything to go perfectly according to plan. When something goes wrong, there can be a familiar attitude of “we’ll find a way.”

That doesn’t mean every Portuguese person is naturally brilliant at fixing things, of course! And desenrascanço isn’t some magical national superpower. But the word captures a familiar idea: when the ideal solution isn’t available, you work with what you’ve got.

You might hear someone say:

“Não há problema. Eu desenrasco-me.”
(No problem. I’ll manage.)

And that little sentence tells you quite a lot about the attitude behind desenrascanço.

Some everyday examples

You might need a bit of desenrascanço when:

• Your phone charger stops working, so you find another way to charge your phone.
• You forget an important ingredient and improvise with something you already have.
• Something breaks five minutes before you need it, so you find a temporary solution.
• You arrive somewhere without something you needed and work out how to manage without it.
• The original plan falls apart, but everyone finds another way forward.

In all of these situations, you might need to desenrascar-se.

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Desenrascanço in everyday Portuguese life

One of the reasons I love words like desenrascanço is that they tell you something about the culture as well as the language.

Portuguese people don’t always expect everything to go perfectly according to plan. When something goes wrong, there is often a certain attitude of “we’ll find a way”.

That doesn’t mean every Portuguese person is naturally brilliant at fixing things, of course! And desenrascanço isn’t some magical national superpower. But the word captures a familiar idea: when the ideal solution isn’t available, you work with what you’ve got.

You might hear someone say:

“Não há problema. Eu desenrasco-me.”
(No problem. I’ll manage.)

And that little sentence can tell you quite a lot about the attitude behind desenrascanço.

Some everyday examples

• Your phone charger stops working, so you find another way to charge your phone.
• You forget an important ingredient and improvise with something you already have.
• Something breaks five minutes before you need it, so you find a temporary solution.
• You arrive somewhere without something you needed and work out how to manage without it.
• The original plan falls apart, but everyone finds another way forward.

In all of these situations, you could be desenrascar-se.

Useful phrases with desenrascar

• Eu desenrasco-me.
  (I’ll manage / I’ll figure something out.)
• Ele desenrascou-se muito bem.
  (He managed very well / He found a way to deal with it.)
• Como é que te vais desenrascar?
  (How are you going to manage?)
• Foi uma grande desenrasca.
  (It was a great quick fix.)
• Foi preciso muito desenrascanço.
  (It took a lot of ingenuity/improvisation.)

And here’s a particularly useful expression:

“Desenrasca-te!”
(Sort yourself out! / Figure it out!)

Depending on the tone and context, this can be encouraging, humorous or rather less friendly! As always with Portuguese, how you say something matters just as much as the words themselves.

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From enrascar to desenrascar

If you’ve already read my post about enrascar, this is where the connection becomes particularly useful.

Expression	Meaning
Enrascar-se	To get yourself into a difficult situation
Enrascanço	A difficult or awkward situation
Desenrascar-se	To find a way out of a difficult situation
Desenrascanço	The ability to find an improvised solution
Desenrasca	An improvised solution or quick fix

So you can think of it almost as a little linguistic journey:

Enrasquei-me. → I got myself into a mess.

Agora tenho de me desenrascar. → Now I have to figure out how to get myself out of it.

Foi preciso algum desenrascanço. → It took some ingenuity.

Mas arranjei uma desenrasca. → But I found a quick fix.

And there you have it: you’ve gone from being enrascado to desenrascado. 😉

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But what’s a MacGyver?

And if you don’t know who MacGyver is, then you’re missing out! 😄

MacGyver was the resourceful hero of the classic American TV series MacGyver, which ran from 1985 to 1992. He had an extraordinary talent for getting himself out of trouble using whatever happened to be available – often turning completely ordinary objects into surprisingly clever solutions.

No proper equipment? No problem. Give MacGyver a paperclip, some string and half a roll of sellotape, and he’d probably save the day.

So when someone says they’re “MacGyvering” something, they’re improvising a solution with whatever they’ve got, which is why it’s such a good comparison for desenrascanço.

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• Enrascanço, Enrascar & Rasca
• Burrice: When Being a Donkey Isn’t Cute
• Portuguese Vocabulary: charco
• Crack the Code: Fresta, Racha or Fissura?
• Portuguese Vocabulary: maço
• Go Back to Vocabulary Posts

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