arribar

Forms

arribar (first-person singular present arribo, first-person singular preterite arribei, past participle arribado)^[1] Houaiss records the 14th-century spelling aribar.^[2]

Etymology

According to Houaiss, Cunha and the DLP it is inherited from Vulgar Latin *arripō (“to reach the bank”), formed on Latin rīpa (“riverbank”), the source of riba.^[2][3][4][5] Wiktionary gives the Medieval Latin form adrīpō, which Niermeyer glosses “to land”.^[1][6][7] In Portuguese the verb can also be analysed as ⟨a-⟩ + ⟨riba⟩ + ⟨-ar⟩, as Silva Bastos and Aurélio do.^[8][9][1]

Machado doubts that the word is native and thinks it was imposed by Spanish arribar.^[10] The Spanish verb is recorded from about 1140.^[11] The same Latin verb gave French arriver “to arrive”, borrowed as Italian arrivare, and Catalan arribar.^[12]

The Latin noun goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₁reip-h₂- (“steep slope”).^[13][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantigas de Santa Maria address the Virgin as porto / u arriban os coytados “the harbour where the afflicted put in”, and use the verb for ships coming to land.^[14][10] The Crónica Troiana has kings who arribaron et tomaron porto “put in and made harbour”.^[14] Houaiss and Cunha date it to the 13th century.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The nautical sense has been central throughout: early dictionaries render it “to return to port” (Cardoso, Barbosa), and Bluteau specifies a ship driven off course into a harbour by a storm or the wind.^[15][16][17] Morais (1789) adds “to reach a place” in general, said also of flocks of birds, from which the migrating sense and the noun arribação come.^[18][2][19] Sailors also use it for turning a ship to leeward.^[20][21]

A figurative sense “to recover one's health or fortune” is in Figueiredo's dictionary of 1899 and is still used in Portugal and in southern Brazil.^[22][23][24] In Brazilian and northern Portuguese speech the verb also means “to lift” and “to go up”, as if from arriba “above”.^[2][24]

Timeline

• 13th century – arriban in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[14][10]
• 14th century – the spelling aribar.^[2]
• 1496 – arribar in the História de mui nobre Vespasiano.^[25]
• 1569 – Cardoso renders it as “to sail back”.^[15]
• 1576 – first record of arribação.^[19]
• 1602 – first record of arribada.^[26]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau: to put into a port off one's course, driven by a storm.^[17]
• 1899 – Figueiredo records “to get better, recover”.^[22]

Meanings

Verb

1. (nautical) Of a ship: to reach the shore or a port; to put back into the port of departure, or into an unplanned port because of damage or a storm: Com o mastro partido, o navio arribou à ilha.^{[2][9][27][1]}
2. (nautical) To bear away, to turn (the ship) to leeward.^[2][21][1]
3. To arrive (somewhere), by chance or on foot.^[2][28]
4. Of birds and animals: to migrate.^[2][27][1]
5. To leave without saying where to; to give up (something begun).^[2]
6. (regional) To lift, to raise; to go up, to climb.^[2][24]
7. (figurative) To recover from an illness or from misfortune.^[2][21][1]
8. (Brazil) Of a herd: to stampede.^[2]

Word family

• arribada
• arribação

Related words

• riba
• Latin rīpa
• Spanish arribar
• French arriver

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. arribar
3. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. arribar
4. ^ 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. arribar
5. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. riba
6. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. adripare
7. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre, p. s.v. adripare
8. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. arribar
9. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. arribar
10. ^ a b c Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. s.v. arribar
11. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. riba
12. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 675
13. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
14. ^ 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. arribar
15. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. arribar
16. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. arribar
17. ^ a b Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. arribar
18. ^ 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, 121
19. ^ a b Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. arribação
20. ^ 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, 579
21. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. arribar
22. ^ a b Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. arribar
23. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. 1
24. ^ a b c 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. arribar
25. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. arribar
26. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. arribada
27. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 951
28. ^ 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. arribar