alugar

Forms

alugar (first-person singular present alugo, first-person singular preterite aluguei, past participle alugado)^[1] Houaiss records the 15th-century forms alogar and aluguar.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin allocō (“to place”), written Old Galician-Portuguese alugar in the oldest texts.^[1][3][4] Nascentes explains that the Portuguese verb took on both Latin senses, “to let out” and “to hire”, the second of which Latin expressed with condūcō.^[4] Cunha and the DLP derive it from locō (“to place; to let out for hire”) with or without the prefix ad-, and Aurélio from the prefix a- and the Latin verb, as a popular word.^[5][6][7] Houaiss also takes the simple verb as the base, mentions those who connect the word with ēlocō (“to let out”), and reports that Nascentes found the prefixed Latin verb unnecessary in view of the simple forms elsewhere, such as Old Spanish allugar, Italian locare and French louer.^[2] Vieira (1871) describes the sound changes: the /d/ of the prefix was assimilated to the /l/, and the /k/ was voiced to /ɡ/.^[8]

García de Diego records alogar “to place, adjust, rent” in Castilian, Asturian, Portuguese and Galician, and Asturian allugar.^[9] Galician has alugar too.^[1] In French, Old French aloer “to place” was remade after the simple verb as French allouer.^[10] Portuguese also has the learned doublet alocar.^[1]

Its base, Latin locus (“place”), had the Old Latin form stlocus.^[11][1] De Vaan finds the usual derivation from Proto-Indo-European *stel- (“to put, place”) hard to defend, since the suffix it needs is not found elsewhere, and leaves the origin open.^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cunha and Houaiss date the verb to the 13th century.^[5][2] Machado's first quotation, of 1317, speaks of men whom someone had ordered to be hired (por que os mandou alugar).^[3] Lorenzo cites the Portuguese Fuero Real, where land is arrendada ou alugada “leased or rented”.^[12] The Crónica Troiana tells of twelve ships that had been hired from merchants for a thousand morabedis (doze naues que alugara de mercadores por mil morabedis).^[12]

Semantic evolution

Barbosa (1611) gives both the sense of letting something out and that of taking it on hire, with Latin loco for the first and conduco for the second.^[13] Morais (1789) adds the reflexive alugar-se a alguém “to take service with someone, to side with someone”.^[14] Later dictionaries also have the sense of hiring a person for wages, and Houaiss labels it regional in Brazil and Portugal.^[15][2] Informal Brazilian Portuguese uses the verb for taking up all of someone's time, usually with tiresome talk.^[2][7]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, according to Cunha and Houaiss.^[5][2]
• 1317 – por que os mandou alugar.^[3]
• 15th century – the forms alogar and aluguar.^[2]
• 1518 – in the Espelho de Cristina.^[16]
• 1542 – alugamos in a private letter.^[17]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses the word with Latin loco.^[18]
• 1611 – Barbosa distinguishes giving and taking on hire.^[13]
• 1789 – Morais records alugar-se a alguém.^[14]

Meanings

Verb

1. To let, to give something for use in return for regular payment: Alugaram o andar de cima a um casal de estudantes.^[2][6][1]
2. To rent, to hire, to take something for use in return for payment.^[2][6][1]
3. (Brazil, Portugal, regional) To hire someone for wages;^[2][19] (reflexive) to hire oneself out, to work for wages.^[2][19]
4. (Brazil, informal) To take up all of someone's time, usually with tiresome talk.^[2][7]

Word family

• aluguel
• aluguer
• alugador
• alugado

Related words

• alocar
• locar
• Latin locō
• Galician alugar

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. alugar
3. ^ a b c Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. s.v. alugar
4. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. alugar
5. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. alugar
6. ^ 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. alugar
7. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. alugar
8. ^ 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, 341
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. allocare
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. allouer
11. ^ 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
12. ^ a b 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. alugar
13. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. alugar
14. ^ 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, 69
15. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 67
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. alugar
17. ^ CLUL (ed.) (2014), P.S. Post Scriptum: Arquivo Digital de Escrita Quotidiana em Portugal e Espanha na Época Moderna, Lisboa: Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, http://ps.clul.ul.pt, p. s.v. alugar
18. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. alugar
19. ^ a b 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. alugar