água

Forms

água f (countable and uncountable, plural águas)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote agua, aguua, auga, augua and agoa.^[2][3] Machado notes that auga and áugua also live on in the dialects.^[4] From the 15th century to the 18th the usual spelling was agoa: the dictionaries of Cardoso (1569), Barbosa (1611) and Pereira (1697) all head the word so.^[5][6][7] Feijó (1734) weighs agoa against agua and finds agoa the commoner, but Morais (1789) enters agoa only as a cross-reference to agua.^[8][9]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin aqua (“water”), written Old Galician-Portuguese agua in the oldest texts.^{[10][3][4][11][1]} The Latin /kʷ/ between vowels was voiced to /ɡʷ/, as Vieira put it in 1871: “the q goes down to its media g”, that is, to the voiced stop.^[12][1]

The same Latin word is Galician auga, Spanish agua, Catalan aigua, Occitan aiga, French eau, Italian acqua and Romanian apă.^[13][1] The Galician form and the old and dialectal Portuguese Old Galician-Portuguese augua and Old Galician-Portuguese auga show the /w/ carried into the first syllable, a variant that is also widespread in Leonese and Aragonese.^[14][4]

The Latin word goes back to *akʷā, and its closest cognate is Germanic: 𐌰𐍈𐌰 (aƕa) and aha, from *ahwō.^[15] Wiktionary derives it from *h₂ekʷeh₂, a word that seems to have meant “running water”.^[1] De Vaan considers other cognates very uncertain, and notes that the Italic and Germanic word may have been borrowed from a non-Indo-European language.^[15]

Earliest recorded meaning

A Latin charter of 973 already writes cum sua agua “with its water”, with the Romance spelling of the noun.^[4] In Galician-Portuguese texts the word appears from the 13th century: a charter of 1266 has na aguua and one of 1282 a agoa, and the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X speak of a harbour “of very deep waters” (no porto das aguas mui fondas).^[2][3] These first records already have the sense “water” and, in the plural, “body of water”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Medieval texts use the word for water itself, for rain and for any stretch of water, often in pairs such as per terra et per agua “by land and by water”.^[2] Cunha observes that almost all the senses of today are already recorded in the medieval language.^[3] Compounds named prepared liquids: agua pee (água-pé, a weak drink of water fermented on the pressed grape skins) is recorded in 1440.^[3][16] Barbosa's 1611 dictionary has agoa ardente “brandy” and agoa benta “holy water”.^[3][6]

Houaiss dates the sense “slope of a roof” to 1721.^[10] A notarial register from Noia in Galicia already has tomar as ágoas “to put the roof on a house” in 1478.^[2] Brazilian Portuguese gave the word informal senses, “drunkenness” and “an easy task”, and in the north-east it means a liquid remedy or sugar-cane spirit.^[10][17]

The word passed into the Portuguese-based creoles of Africa and Asia: agu in Kabuverdianu and Kristang, awa in Papiamentu and Sãotomense.^[1]

Timeline

• 973 – a Latin charter writes cum sua agua.^[4]
• 1266 – na aguua in a Galician-Portuguese charter, and a agoa in one of 1282.^[2]
• 13th century, second half – the Cantigas de Santa Maria use aguas for the waters of a harbour.^[2]
• c. 1430 – the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437) has both agoa and água.^[18][19]
• 1440 – first record of água-pé.^[3]
• 1478 – tomar as ágoas “to roof a house” in a notarial register of Noia.^[2]
• 1569 – Cardoso's Portuguese–Latin dictionary heads the word Agoa.^[5]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists agoa ardente and agoa benta.^[6]
• 1734 – Feijó's Orthographia discusses the spellings agoa and agua.^[8]
• 1789 – Morais's dictionary heads the word agua and refers agoa to it.^[9]
• 1871 – Vieira explains the change from Latin q to g.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. water, the colourless liquid H₂O: Bebe um copo de água antes de sair.^[10][20][1]
2. A body of water: a sea, lake or river; in the plural, the waters of a place: as águas do rio.^[10][21][1]
3. rain: Esta noite caiu muita água.^[20][1]
4. A watery body fluid, such as sweat, tears or saliva, and (in the plural) the amniotic fluid released before a birth.^[10][21][1]
5. The juice of certain fruits; the sap that runs from cut plants: água de coco.^[10][20]
6. The clarity and lustre of a precious stone; hence de primeira água “of the first water, of the highest quality”.^[20][22]
7. (architecture) Each sloping surface of a roof.^[10][22]
8. (Brazil, informal) drunkenness: estar na água.^[10][22]
9. (Brazil, informal) A task that takes no effort.^[10]
10. (north-eastern Brazil) A liquid medicine or infusion; sugar-cane spirit, cachaça.^[10][17]

Word family

• aguaceiro
• aguada
• aguadeiro
• aguar
• aguardente
• água-pé
• desaguar
• aguado

Related words

• aguarela
• agueiro
• aquário
• aquático
• aqueduto
• aquígeno
• aquoso
• gomil
• Latin aqua
• Galician auga
• Spanish agua

Usage notes

The proverb águas passadas não movem moinhos “past waters don't turn mills” means that what is over can no longer matter.^[21][1]

Houaiss and Aurélio also record a separate noun água, masculine, “man” among the Omágua people of Amazonia, possibly from a Tupi word.^[10][20]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Instituto da Lingua Galega, Dicionario de dicionarios do galego medieval (DDGM), ed. Ernesto González Seoane, Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/ddgm, p. s.v. agua
3. ^ a b c d e f g Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. água
4. ^ a b c d e Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. s.v. água
5. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. agoa
6. ^ a b c Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. agoa
7. ^ Pereira, Bento (1697), Thesouro da lingoa portuguesa, in the 1697 edition of his Prosodia (1st ed. 1647; CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. agoa
8. ^ a b Feijó, João de Morais Madureira (1734), Orthographia, ou Arte de escrever, e pronunciar com acerto a lingua portugueza, Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. agoa
9. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1789), Diccionario da lingua portugueza composto pelo padre D. Rafael Bluteau, reformado, e accrescentado, 2 vols., Lisboa: Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, p. 1, 42
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. água
11. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. água
12. ^ a b Vieira, Frei Domingos (1871–1874), Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da lingua portugueza, 5 vols., Porto: Ernesto Chardron e Bartholomeu H. de Moraes, p. 1, 238
13. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 570
14. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 79
15. ^ 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
16. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. água-pé
17. ^ a b Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. água
18. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. água
19. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. agoa
20. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. água
21. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 358
22. ^ a b c Michaelis: Moderno Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, São Paulo: Melhoramentos (online as Michaelis Dicionário Brasileiro da Língua Portuguesa, https://michaelis.uol.com.br), p. s.v. água