Pregando peça com jacaré falso na lagoa

What does “pregar uma peça” mean in Portuguese?

Steer a fake alligator across the lagoon toward your unsuspecting brother and you have just done the thing Brazilians call pregar uma peça — to play a prank or pull a trick on someone. It is the everyday phrase for a playful scare or fooling, almost always followed by em: pregar uma peça em alguém, “to play a trick on someone.” Warm and mischievous, never malicious.

Here peça is not the ordinary “piece/part” you know from machines or theatre tickets — in this fixed expression it carries an older sense of a trick or jest. The verb pregar is doing the work of “to pull off” or “land” on someone, so the whole thing means roughly “to land a trick on someone.” You will hear it across Brazil and Portugal: Ele me pregou uma peça (“he played a trick on me”), or o destino me pregou uma peça (“fate played a trick on me”). On April 1, Dia da Mentira, it is everywhere. Note the close cousin pegadinha, the noun for the prank-video genre itself — pregar uma peça is the action, pegadinha is the gag clip.