atrair

Forms

atrair (first-person singular present atraio, first-person singular preterite atraí, past participle atraído)^[1] The 15th-century texts write athraer, atraher and atrayr.^[2][3] Attrahir appears in the 16th century.^[2][3] The dictionaries of the 17th and 18th centuries head the word attrahir: Pereira (1697), Feijó (1734) and Bluteau, who refers atrahir to it.^[4][5][6] Vieira still heads it attrahir in 1871 and calls attraher the old Portuguese form.^[7]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin attrahō (“to draw towards oneself”), with a change of conjugation from the Latin third conjugation to the Portuguese verbs in -ir.^[2][3][8][1] Wiktionary calls it a learned borrowing, and Meyer-Lübke too considered the Portuguese verb a learned form.^[1][9] Machado shows that an older form atraer, closer to the Latin infinitive, was in use in the 15th century and still current in the 16th.^[10]

The Latin verb is formed from ad- (“to”) and trahō (“to pull, drag”).^[11][1] The same Latin verb gave Spanish atraer, Galician atraer, Catalan atraure, French attraire and Italian attrarre.^[12][1] Meyer-Lübke notes that Romanian atrage is a very recent formation.^[12][1] The further origin of the Latin word for “to pull” is unclear: de Vaan reconstructs a Proto-Italic stem, and a link with the Germanic verb Proto-Germanic *draganą (“to drag”) is debated because the initial consonants do not match regularly.^[13][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the first records to the 15th century, from Cunha's index of medieval Portuguese.^[2][3] One of the 15th-century records Machado quotes is from the Livros de Falcoaria, where the falconer lures the birds with green fodder (atraenos en verdes), the physical sense “to draw towards oneself”.^[10] The Livro das tres vertudes, in a witness of after 1450, also uses atraer.^[14]

Semantic evolution

The figurative sense “to win over, bring someone to one's side” is old: a 16th-century text quoted by Machado speaks of drawing the inhabitants to peace (attrahelos à paz), and the Infante D. Henrique's Meditações say that Christ raised on the cross will draw all wills and love to himself.^[10] The physical sense of a magnet drawing iron is in Vieira's quotation from Jorge Cardoso's Agiologio Lusitano (a pedra de cevar attrahe a si o aço).^[7] Bluteau's book of synonyms gives the word the senses “to charm, bewitch” and “to coax with caresses”.^[15] Modern dictionaries add the scientific sense of a force acting at a distance and the senses “to fascinate, interest”.^[16][2]

Timeline

• 1400s – first records, spelt athraer, atraher and atrayr.^[2][3]
• after 1450 – atraer in a witness of the Livro das tres vertudes.^[14]
• 1500s – the spelling attrahir; the Infante D. Henrique's Meditações use attrahireis.^[3][10]
• 1697 – Pereira's Thesouro heads the word attrahir.^[4]
• 1871 – Vieira heads the word attrahir and refers atrahir to it.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To draw towards oneself; to make something come nearer, as a magnet does iron: O íman atrai os pregos.^[2][17][1]
2. (physics) To exert a force on a body at a distance, pulling it closer.^[16][18]
3. To call or lure someone to come closer: O cheiro do pão atraiu os vizinhos.^[17][18]
4. To be an object of desire for someone; to attract, fascinate, seduce: A cidade grande sempre o atraiu.^[2][19][1]
5. To draw attention, interest or feelings upon oneself; to provoke: atrair olhares.^[2][17]
6. To win someone over to an opinion, party or faith.^[18][20]

Word family

• atraente
• atraído

Related words

• atração
• atrativo
• atrator
• trazer
• Latin attrahō
• Spanish atraer

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. atrair
3. ^ a b c d e f Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. atrair
4. ^ a b 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. attrahir
5. ^ Feijó, João de Morais Madureira (1734), Orthographia, ou Arte de escrever, e pronunciar com acerto a lingua portugueza, Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. attrahir
6. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. atrahir
7. ^ a b c 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, 653
8. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. atrair
9. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 52
10. ^ a b c d Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. s.v. atrair
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. attrahō
12. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 771
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 Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. atraer
15. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. attrahir
16. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 1081
17. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. atrair
18. ^ 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. atrair
19. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. atrair
20. ^ 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. atrair