front

Forms

front m (plural fronts)^[1] The word is masculine in eastern Catalan, in Roussillon (lu frún at Formiguera, in the Capcir), in the Balearics and in Valencia, but feminine, la front, across the north and west of the western dialects, from the valleys of the Cinca and the two Nogueras to Andorra and down the Llitera to Faió; the Privileges of Àneu of 1341 already have the feminine.^[2] The stressed vowel is close in eastern Catalan, the Balearics and most of Valencia, and open in a good part of western Catalan.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin frōns (“forehead, brow; front”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]}

The same Latin word is Occitan front, French front, Spanish frente, Italian fronte, Portuguese fronte and Romanian frunte.^[6][1] The troubadours wrote Old Occitan front for the forehead.^[7] Old Spanish had fruente, first recorded in a document of 1124, which later lost its diphthong after the liquid.^[8]

In classical Latin the noun was usually feminine.^[2] Catalan, with Occitan, French, Romansh, Sardinian and some northern Italian dialects, made it masculine, a gender found already in Plautus and in other writers with popular features, while Italian, Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese kept the feminine.^[2]

Catalan has a close /o/ in this word but an open /ɔ/ in font and pont, where Spanish has the same diphthong in all three.^[2] Coromines, following Niedermann, explains it by the long vowel of the Latin nominative ⟨frōns⟩, which Catalan extended to the other cases, while Spanish followed the short vowel of the oblique cases (⟨frontis⟩).^[2]

De Vaan finds no plausible etymology for the Latin word.^[9] He considers the Celtic and Germanic words for “side” or “steep” compared by Walde–Hofmann and Pokorny too vague in meaning, and puts forward, as speculative, *gʷʰron-t- (“the side where the mouth is”).^[9] Wiktionary's Catalan entry gives Pokorny's *bʰron-t-, from a root meaning “to project”.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

CICA's earliest record of the word is in the Furs de València (1261–1271).^[10] Jaume I's chronicle tells how a crossbow bolt struck him in the head prop del front “near the forehead”.^[11] Llull uses it in the Llibre de contemplació and the Doctrina pueril for the upper part of the face, which he takes for the seat of the imagination and the understanding.^[12][13]

Semantic evolution

Medieval texts use the word for the forehead, as in the medical books that prescribe bleeding from the vein in the middle of the forehead, and also for the front of a mountain or a building, a façade: in 1437 the Barcelona council ordered the front of a house in the carrer de Montcada to be pulled down to widen the street.^[13] The phrase de front “facing, from the front” appears in Romeu Llull.^[13]

Labèrnia's dictionary of 1839 records front á front “face to face” and arrugar lo front “to frown in anger”.^[14] Fabra's dictionary of 1932 adds the military senses, the front rank of a body of troops and the width of ground it occupies.^[15] The GDLC adds the front line where fighting takes place, the leading edge of a forest fire, the meteorological front and the political coalition.^[5]

The derivatives are old: afrontar is recorded in the 12th century, afront “insult to the face” in the 13th, enfront in 1461 and fronterejar in 1490, while frontal (1839) and frontispici (1575) are learned words from Latin.^[4]

Timeline

• 1261–1271 – earliest record in CICA, in the Furs de València.^[10]
• 1272 – Llull's Llibre de contemplació places the power of understanding in the forehead.^[12][13]
• 1341 – the Privileges of Àneu use the word as a feminine.^[2]
• 1437 – lo front de l'alberch, the front of a house, in the Barcelona council's records.^[13]
• 1461 – first record of enfront.^[4]
• 1472 – the Valencian Joan Esteve writes la front, feminine.^[2]
• 1839 – Labèrnia records front á front and the learned frontal.^[14][4]
• 1932 – Fabra's Diccionari general gives the military senses.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. forehead, brow: the upper part of the face, between the temples, reaching from the eyebrows up to the hairline: Es va eixugar la suor del front.^[16][3]
2. (entomology) In insects, the part of the head between the clypeus and the frontal suture.^[16][5]
3. The front part of a building, monument or object; a façade.^[16][3]
4. (fortification) The stretch of a rampart between two neighbouring bastions.^[16][3]
5. (military) The first rank of a body of troops; the width of ground it occupies; the line or zone where fighting takes place.^[16][5]
6. (meteorology) A front: the surface separating two air masses of different temperature and humidity.^[5]
7. (politics) A coalition of parties or movements.^[5]

Word family

• afront
• afrontar
• afrontós
• bifront
• confrontar
• confront
• confrontació
• enfront
• enfrontar
• enfrontament
• fronter
• fronterejar
• frontaler

Related words

• frontal
• frontispici
• Latin frons
• Occitan front
• Spanish frente

Usage notes

The phrase amb el front alt or amb el front ben alt means with one's head held high, without shame.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 4, 211
3. ^ a b c d e Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. front
4. ^ a b c d Bruguera, Jordi (1996), Diccionari etimològic, Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, p. 426
5. ^ a b c d e f Enciclopèdia Catalana, Gran diccionari de la llengua catalana (GDLC), Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana; online edition, https://www.diccionari.cat, p. s.v. front
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. frons
7. ^ Raynouard, François-Just-Marie (1838–1844), Lexique roman, ou dictionnaire de la langue des troubadours, 6 vols., Paris: Silvestre, p. 3, 401
8. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 953
9. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Torruella, Joan; Pérez Saldanya, Manuel; Martines, Josep (dirs.), Corpus Informatitzat del Català Antic (CICA), https://www.cica.cat, p. s.v. front
11. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 8, 214
12. ^ a b Nou glossari general lul·lià (NGGL), Centre de Documentació Ramon Llull, Universitat de Barcelona, https://nggl.ub.edu, p. s.v. front
13. ^ a b c d e Faraudo de Saint-Germain, Lluís, Vocabulari de la llengua catalana medieval, online edition, Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, p. s.v. front
14. ^ a b Labèrnia, Pere (1839–1840), Diccionari de la llengua catalana ab la correspondencia castellana y llatina, 2 vols., Barcelona, p. s.v. front
15. ^ a b Fabra, Pompeu (1932), Diccionari general de la llengua catalana, Barcelona: Llibreria Catalònia, p. s.v. front
16. ^ a b c d e f Institut d'Estudis Catalans (2007), Diccionari de la llengua catalana, 2nd ed. (DIEC2), Barcelona: Edicions 62; online edition with later updates, https://dlc.iec.cat, p. s.v. front