How to say far away in colloquial Portuguese

Você foi longe, hein! Onde Judas perdeu as botas. 

Have you ever heard a Brazilian say this? If yes, it’s likely you just said something unexpected in Brazilian Portuguese, that was far from the thoughts of the person you’re speaking to. It’s also likely the phrase was prefixed with a “Nossa!”, “Poxa!” or an “Oxe!”

Another possibility is that the other person was just joking around, but you took whatever it was seriously and dug up further information to back your cause.

In English, I suppose the best translation for “Você foi longe, hein!” might be something like “You went a little far with that one, don’t you think?”

Hein is an interjection and can mean different things. At the end of a sentence, as in the example above, it can mean something like “Right?” or “Don’t you think?” If someone says something to you and you don’t understand or hear the whole thing, you can ask “Hein?”, which would be like “What?”

Onde Judas perdeu as botas

The article’s opening sentence can also be taken literally to say that you went somewhere far away. Do you know how to say far away idiomatically? You can use the Brazilian saying “Onde Judas perdeu as botas”, which translates as “Where Judas lost his boots”. It denotes a very far away place, usually with the connotation of a place that is totally out of one’s way. Let’s imagine you had to pick something up at Oeste Shopping in Campo Grande (in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro, over an hour from the beaches), someone might say:

• Você foi longe, hein! O Oeste Shopping fica onde Judas perdeu as botas.
  = You went far away! The Oeste Mall is where Judas lost his boots.

Origin of the expression

It is said that Judas hanged himself barefoot from a tree after betraying Jesus. It was believed that he had put the money earned by betraying Jesus in his boots. When the soldiers saw that Judas was not wearing his boots, they set out to find them and the money. No one ever found Judas’ boots. That is where the expression “Onde Judas perdeu as botas” comes from. It denotes a distant , unknown, and inaccessible place.