amarelo

Forms

amarelo (feminine amarela, masculine plural amarelos, feminine plural amarelas, comparable, comparative mais amarelo, superlative o mais amarelo or amarelíssimo, diminutive amarelinho)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote amarelo.^[2] Houaiss records amarello from the 14th century and amarelho in the 15th.^[3][2] Cunha dates the spelling amarello to 1572, and Wiktionary lists amarello and marelo as other forms.^[4][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Medieval Latin amārellus (“yellowish, pale”), a word of the Latin of the Iberian Peninsula, written Old Galician-Portuguese amarelo in the oldest texts.^[3][4][5][1] The Latin word is a diminutive of Latin amārus (“bitter”) with -ellus, first recorded in an Iberian document of 919.^[1][6] Houaiss, Machado and Nascentes, like Corominas for the Spanish word, explain the change from “bitter” to “pale, yellow” by the pallor of people with jaundice, a disease put down to a disorder of the bile, the bitter humour.^[3][5][7][6]

The same word is Galician amarelo, Mirandese amarielho, Spanish amarillo and Asturian mariellu.^[1][8] The Spanish word is recorded from 1074, as Old Spanish amarielo.^[9]

The Latin adjective is traced to Proto-Indo-European *h₂eh₃m- (“bitter, raw”), with Sanskrit आम (āmá, “raw, unripe”) and Ancient Greek ὠμός (ōmós, “raw”) as cognates.^[1] De Vaan gives his reconstruction, *h₂h₃m-ro-, with a question mark, and compares a Sanskrit adjective meaning “sour”.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Latin charters from Portugal already have the word: as a personal name in 944, and in 1132 per pinnam amarelam “along the yellow crag”.^[5][3] In the vernacular it appears in the 13th century.^[4] One of the Cantigas de Santa Maria tells how the skin of someone's legs split and agua amarela “yellow water” ran out, and the Crónica Troiana describes hair moy longos et amarelos que semellauan ouro “very long and yellow, so that it looked like gold”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Beside the colour, the sense “pale, wan” is old; a riso amarelo or sorriso amarelo is a forced smile.^[3][1] Camões has A boca negra, os dentes amarelos “the mouth black, the teeth yellow” in Os Lusíadas (1572).^[11] The old Caldas Aulete has raça amarela for the peoples of East Asia and febre amarela “yellow fever”; the use for East Asian people is now derogatory.^[12][1][13]

Brazilian Portuguese uses the noun for someone suffering from malaria or hookworm, and for any pale, sickly person, a use Navarro records across the north-east, Minas Gerais and Mato Grosso.^[3][13][14] In Portugal an amarelo is also a strike-breaker, and the adjective means “disloyal to one's fellow workers”.^[13][1] In Brazilian football the word is short for cartão amarelo “yellow card”.^[1]

Timeline

• 944 – a Latin charter has the word as a personal name.^[5][3]
• 1132 – per pinnam amarelam in a Latin charter.^[5]
• 13th century – first vernacular records, in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[4][2]
• 14th century – the spelling amarello.^[3]
• 1305 – first record of the verb amarelecer.^[4]
• 15th century – the spelling amarelho, and the noun amareledõo (amarelidão).^[3][4]
• 1572 – dentes amarelos in Os Lusíadas.^[11]
• 1899 – Figueiredo calls the origin of the word uncertain.^[15]

Meanings

Adjective

1. yellow, of the colour of egg yolk, saffron or gold: Comprou um vestido amarelo.^[3][1]
2. pale, having lost its colour: Ficou amarelo de susto.^[3][13]
3. (figurative) Of a smile: forced, not spontaneous.^[3][1]
4. (derogatory) Of East Asian descent.^[1][13]
5. (Portugal, derogatory) Disloyal to one's fellow workers.^[13]

Noun

1. The colour yellow.^[3][1]
2. A yellow dye or paint.^[3][13]
3. (in the plural) Brass or copper fittings and objects: Passou a tarde a polir os amarelos.^[3][16]
4. (derogatory) A person of East Asian descent.^[3][1]
5. (Brazil) Someone suffering from malaria or from hookworm disease (amarelão).^[3][13]
6. (Brazil, derogatory) A pale, sickly-looking person.^[3][14]
7. (Portugal, slang, derogatory) A strikebreaker.^[13]
8. (Brazil, football) A yellow card.^[1]
9. (botany) A name of several trees, among them the vinhático-do-campo.^[3]

Word family

• amarelado
• amarelão
• amarelar
• amarelidão
• amarelinha
• amarelinho
• amarelecer
• amarelo-canário
• amarelo-limão
• ipê-amarelo

Related words

• amargo
• amaro
• Latin amārus
• Galician amarelo
• Spanish amarillo

Usage notes

Older dictionaries proposed other origins: Silva Bastos (1912) derived the word from âmbar “amber” through a form ambarelo, and Figueiredo (1899) left it unexplained.^[17][15] The derivation from amarellus is the one the modern dictionaries accept.^[3][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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. amarelo
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. amarelo
4. ^ 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. amarelo
5. ^ a b c d e Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. s.v. amarelo
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 233
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. amarelo
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. amarellus
9. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. amarillo
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. amarelo
12. ^ 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. amarelo
13. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. amarelo
14. ^ a b Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. amarelo
15. ^ a b Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 71
16. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 547
17. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. amarelo