achegar

Forms

achegar (first-person singular present achego, first-person singular preterite acheguei, past participle achegado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin applicō (“to attach, bring close; to put in, land”), written Old Galician-Portuguese achegar in the oldest texts and also Old Galician-Portuguese acheguar in the 14th century.^[2][3][4][1] Houaiss, Cunha, Machado, the DLP and Wiktionary agree on this source.^{[2][3][4][5][1]}

The same Latin verb is Galician achegar, Spanish allegar, Catalan aplegar and Romanian apleca.^[6][1] The Catalan verb means “to gather”, and in Valencian and Old Catalan also “to arrive”.^[6][7]

The Latin verb is formed ad- + plicō (“to fold”).^[8][1] In Late Latin it took on senses of place such as “to make for” and “to reach”, as did the simple verb.^[9][10]

Aurélio, Michaelis, Figueiredo and Nascentes instead take it as formed in Portuguese from chegar with the prefix a-.^{[11][12][13][14]} The two views are close, since that verb itself continues the simple Latin verb.^[15][7] Wiktionary counts the learned aplicar as a doublet.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Machado and Lorenzo's chronology give as the first record a line of the Cantigas de Santa Maria (no. 262), por achegar nossa prol, “to bring about our good”.^[4][16] The Crónica Troiana uses the pronominal verb for “to draw near”: wild and fearsome beasts lived there, so that no one could come close (nõ se pode alo njhũ achegar).^[16] A cantiga d'amigo has the intransitive verb in the sense “to arrive”.^[16]

Semantic evolution

The core sense, “to bring or come close”, has stayed the same since the medieval texts.^[2][16] Houaiss marks the intransitive “to reach, arrive” as archaic;^[2][17] Vieira illustrates it from Rui de Pina's chronicle, where the king “reached the place of Moreira” (achegou ao logar de Moreira).^[2][17]

Morais (1789) records achegar-se a uma mulher “to have intercourse with a woman”, and his 1813 edition adds “to seek someone's protection”.^[18][19] Houaiss has both senses as figurative uses of the pronominal verb.^[2] In the dialects of Portugal, above all in Trás-os-Montes, the verb means to take a cow or mare to the male to be covered, a sense the REW already records.^[20][6][21] The DLP marks the verb as little used and popular in European Portuguese.^[5]

Timeline

• 13th century – por achegar nossa prol in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[4][16]
• 1344 – the agent noun achegador in the Crónica of 1344.^[16]
• 14th century – the spelling acheguar, and achegamento (written achegamēto) in the Orto do Esposo.^[2][3]
• c. 1450 – the verb in the Livro das tres vertudes (witness after 1450).^[22]
• 16th century – first record of the noun achega “addition”.^[3]
• 1697 – Pereira glosses it as chegar and renders it with Latin applico and admoveo.^[23]
• 1789 – Morais records achegar-se a uma mulher.^[18]
• 1871 – Vieira marks the intransitive sense “to arrive” as old.^[17]

Meanings

Verb

1. To bring or put (something, someone or oneself) near or next to;^[2][11][1] (pronominal) to come close: Achegou o banco à lareira.^[2][11][1]
2. To arrange in the right place; to tuck in, aconchegar.^[2][11]
3. (pronominal, figurative) To seek shelter or protection with someone.^[2][12]
4. (pronominal, figurative) To seek intimacy with someone; to have sexual intercourse.^[2][12]
5. To gather, bring together.^[2][24]
6. (Portugal, regional) To heap up, pile; to take a female animal to the male for mating.^[2][20]
7. (pronominal) To be added to what has been said or counted.^[2][12]
8. (archaic, intransitive) To reach, arrive.^[2][17]

Word family

• achega
• achegado
• achegador
• achegamento

Related words

• aplicar
• chegar
• Latin applicō
• Galician achegar
• Spanish allegar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. achegar
3. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. achegar
4. ^ a b c d Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. s.v. achegar
5. ^ a b 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. achegar
6. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 548
7. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. llegar
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. applicō
9. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 729
10. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. applicare
11. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. achegar
12. ^ a b c d 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. achegar
13. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. achegar
14. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. s.v. achegar
15. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6601
16. ^ a b c d e f 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. achegar
17. ^ a b c d 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, 96
18. ^ 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, 18
19. ^ Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 8
20. ^ a b Instituto da Lingua Galega, Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués (TLPGP), Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/tesouro, p. s.v. achegar
21. ^ Wikcionário (Portuguese Wiktionary), pt.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. achegar
22. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. achegar
23. ^ 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. achegar
24. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. achegar