Pele's Name Is Officially Included In The Portuguese Dictionary, This Means

Brazilian football legend, Pele. (Photo: Twitter/@Pele)

JAKARTA The name of the late Brazilian footballer Pele has been officially added to the Portuguese-speaking Michaelis Dictionary, which is the most popular in the lengenda country.

Pele is the nickname of the late football legend whose full name is Edson Arantes do Nascimento. Now Pele's name is a new entry as a word of nature with a meaning: extraordinary, unmatched, unique.

Putting Pele's name into the dictionary was carried out after a campaign conducted by the Pele Foundation in honor of the football star managed to collect more than 125 thousand signatures.

Pele died last December at the age of 82. He is the only player to win the World Cup three times and is widely regarded as the best footballer in history.

During his two-decade playing career, Pele set a record 1,281 goals. He collected that number in a joint performance with Brazilian club Santos, Brazil's national team, and New York Cosmos.

Since his death due to complications of colon cancer, his former club, Santos, the sports channel SporTV and the Pepel Foundation have requested that the name of this soccer star be recognized as a separate entry in the dictionary.

The request was then heeded by the Michaelis dictionary publisher. On Wednesday they also announced that the word would soon be included in their digital edition of the Portuguese dictionary and in the print version after the next edition was published.

The entry reads: "pe.men's adj. something or someone extraordinary, based on its quality, value or superiority cannot be aligned with anything or anyone, such as PeLON, the nickname of Edson Arantes do Nascimento (1940-2022), which is considered the greatest athlete of all time; remarkably, there is no appeal, unique.

The Pepelian Foundation, a charity organization formed to preserve the player's legacy, said it was the right tribute to the "king".

"The words that have been used to refer to someone who is best at what they do have [became] eternal on the pages of the dictionary!" read the tweet as reported by the BBC.