árvore

Forms

árvore f (plural árvores)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote aruor, arvor and aruore, and in the 14th century also aruol and aaruor.^[2][3][4] Cardoso (1569) heads the word Aruore and Barbosa (1611) Arvore.^[5][6] Machado quotes a learned árbor from 16th-century verse.^[7]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin arbor (“tree”), written Old Galician-Portuguese arvor, Old Galician-Portuguese arvore and Old Galician-Portuguese arvol in the oldest texts.^[2][8][7][1] Like Logudorese, Portuguese kept the Latin feminine, which Old Spanish also had for a time.^[9][10]

The same Latin word is Galician árbore, Spanish árbol, Catalan arbre, French arbre, Italian albero and Romanian arbore.^[9][1]

Nascentes notes that the stress on the first syllable is that of a learned word, though every speaker knows the word.^[11] In his fuller dictionary he cites Menéndez Pidal, who held the Spanish word to be learned, and thinks the Portuguese one may be too because of the stress.^[12]

The Latin word had an older nominative arbōs.^[13] De Vaan connects it with arduus (“high, steep”) and reconstructs Proto-Italic *arþōs and PIE *h₃rdʰ-ōs “height, uprightness”, a sense that would have become “upright tree”.^[13] The drawback, he notes, is that the other languages build their adjective “high” on a different stem, so that the Latin noun would be a very archaic formation.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

A Latin charter of 984 already uses the Romance form: a property cum suas casas et suas aruores “with its houses and its trees”.^[7][3] In 1209 a legal text has arvol and aruoles in a rule about anyone who enters a vineyard or cuts a tree.^[7] A document of 1259 speaks of pereyro et de mazeyras ou doutras aruores “pear tree and apple trees or other trees”.^[4] A cantiga has so bõas arvores, per bõos prados “under good trees, through good meadows”.^[14]

Semantic evolution

The word was sometimes masculine: Morais (1813) notes the masculine in the Palmeirim, and Machado quotes outros arvores muyto gramdes “other very big trees” from the Crónica dos Reis de Bisnaga.^[15][7]

Like Latin, the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Catalan words could also mean a ship's mast.^[9] Morais (1813) adds a printing term, the iron frame that holds the bar of the press, and arvore de geração, a family tree.^[15] Figueiredo (1899) lists the main shaft of a wheel or machine, the mast, a family tree, various crystallisations and, poetically, a ship.^[16] In the 20th century the tree diagram passed into mathematics, as a connected graph without cycles, and into linguistics.^[2]

The word passed into the creoles: arvi and arvori in Kabuverdianu, arvuri in Guinea-Bissau Creole and árve in Macanese.^[1]

Timeline

• 984 – a Latin charter writes suas aruores.^[7][3]
• 1209 – arvol and aruoles in a legal text.^[7]
• 1259 – aruores in a dated document.^[4]
• 13th century – the spelling aruor.^[2][8]
• 14th century – the spellings aruol and aaruor.^[2]
• c. 1430 – aruor and aruore in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[17][18]
• 1569 – Cardoso heads the word Aruore.^[5]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists Arvore and Arvoreta “small tree”.^[6]
• 1813 – Morais records the masculine in the Palmeirim and the printing sense.^[15]
• 1899 – Figueiredo lists the senses “mast”, “shaft” and “ship”.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. A tree: a woody plant with a single upright stem, the trunk, that branches well above the ground.^[2][19][1]
2. Anything with a branching structure like a tree, such as a diagram or a family tree.^[2][19]
3. (mathematics) A connected graph without cycles.^[2][1]
4. (linguistics) A tree diagram of the constituent structure of a sentence.^[2]
5. (mechanics) A shaft that transmits motion in a machine.^[20][21]
6. (nautical) A ship's mast.^[22][23]
7. (poetic) A ship.^[21]

Word family

• arvoredo
• arvorar
• desarvorar
• arvoreta

Related words

• arbóreo
• arbusto
• arborizar
• Latin arbor
• Galician árbore
• Spanish árbol

Usage notes

Common compounds are árvore de Natal “Christmas tree” and árvore genealógica “family tree”.^[2][1] For the idea of “tree”, learned words use the prefixes arbor(i)- and dendr(o)-.^[22]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. árvore
3. ^ a b c 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. aruor
4. ^ a b c 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. aruore
5. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. aruore
6. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. arvore
7. ^ a b c d e f g Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. s.v. árvore
8. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. árvore
9. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 606
10. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 313
11. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. árvore
12. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 47
13. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
14. ^ Universo Cantigas: Glosario da poesía medieval profana galego-portuguesa, A Coruña: Instituto da Lingua e Literatura (ILLA), Universidade da Coruña, https://www.universocantigas.gal, p. s.v. arvor
15. ^ a b c Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 201
16. ^ a b Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 137
17. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. aruor
18. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. aruore
19. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. árvore
20. ^ 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. árvore
21. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. árvore
22. ^ a b Aulete, Francisco Júlio Caldas, Dicionário contemporâneo da língua portuguesa (1st ed. 1881), online as Aulete Digital, Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, https://aulete.com.br, p. s.v. árvore
23. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 981