abade

Forms

abade m (plural abades, feminine abadessa, feminine plural abadessas)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote abade and abbade;^[2][3] Houaiss records ábade in 1288 and habade in the 13th century.^[2][3] Figueiredo (1899) and Silva Bastos (1912) enter abade only as a cross-reference to abbade.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Ecclesiastical Latin abbās (“abbot”), in the accusative, written Old Galician-Portuguese abade in the oldest texts.^[3][6][1] Machado thinks the word entered the language of the Church in the 4th century with the Vulgate.^[6]

The same Latin word is Galician abade, Spanish abad, Catalan abat, Occitan abat, Italian abate and French abbé.^[7][8][1]

The Latin word comes from Ancient Greek ἀββᾶς (abbâs, “father”), from Aramaic אבא (ʾabbā, “father”).^[1][9] Nascentes and Aurélio call the source Syriac, the emphatic form of the Hebrew word for “father”, and Corriente and the DLE too speak of Syriac.^{[10][11][8][12]}

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the word to 1141, spelt abbate, from a document Viterbo cites about the abbot of Pendorada, and Machado also finds a place called Fonte de Abbate in a text of 1101.^[3][6] The first record in a Portuguese text that Lorenzo's chronology gives is the testament of Afonso II of 1214: e mando que o abade d'Alcobaza lis de aquela dezima “and I order that the abbot of Alcobaça give them that tithe”.^[2] Machado's first Portuguese quotation is a document of 1288, which names the abbot beside the prior and the clerk.^[6]

Semantic evolution

Machado says the word first meant “priest, parish priest”.^[6] The Cantigas de Santa Maria use it both for the head of a monastery and for a priest at the altar, a hermit or a confessor.^[2] The sense “parish priest” still lives in Galicia and northern Portugal, and Portuguese dictionaries label it as Portuguese usage.^[13][11][3] The same sense is found in Spanish from the Cantar de mio Cid to Covarrubias.^[14] From the comfortable life of abbots came the figurative sense of a well-fed, placid man.^[3][9] In Brazil it names a bundle of cigarette papers and a bird, the curl-crested jay.^[3][11]

Timeline

• 1101 – Fonte de Abbate, a place name.^[6]
• 1141 – a document names the abbot of Pendorada, spelt abbate.^[3][6]
• 1214 – o abade d'Alcobaza in the testament of Afonso II.^[2]
• 1288 – ábade in a Portuguese document.^[6][3]
• 1416 – the earliest dated prose witness in the CTA, the Vida do Cativo Monge Confesso.^[15]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses abade as Latin abbas and pastor ecclesiae.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. (religion) An abbot, the superior of an abbey (abadia) or of a monastic order.^[3][1][11]
2. (religion) The superior of an association of clergy or lay people.^[3]
3. (Portugal, religion) The parish priest of certain parishes.^[3][11]
4. (figurative, pejorative) A fat, placid man who lives a comfortable life.^[3][9]
5. (northern Brazil) A bundle of cigarette papers.^[3][17]
6. (Brazil, ornithology) The curl-crested jay (Cyanocorax cristatellus), the gralha-do-campo.^[3][11]

Word family

• abadengo

Related words

• abadessa
• abadia
• abacial
• Latin abbās
• Galician abade
• Spanish abad

Usage notes

The feminine is abadessa.^[1][11] Abade is also a surname, first a nickname.^[18][1]

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 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. abade
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. abade
4. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. abade
5. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. abade
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. s.v. abade
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. abad
9. ^ a b c Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, revised online edition (2023–) of the Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa Contemporânea (2001), https://dicionario.acad-ciencias.pt, p. s.v. abade
10. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. abade
11. ^ a b c d e f g Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. abade
12. ^ Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. abad
13. ^ Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. abade
14. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 3
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. abade
16. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. abade
17. ^ 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. abade
18. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1952), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 2: Nomes próprios, Rio de Janeiro, p. s.v. abade