bairro

Forms

bairro m (plural bairros)^[1] Old spellings include barrio (1301, in Trás-os-Montes), barrho (1321), bairro (1372) and bayrro (1611).^[2][3] Cunha also records bairo and barro in the 14th century.^[4]

Etymology

Houaiss calls its origin disputed.^[3] Houaiss, Cunha, Corominas and the DLE take it from a colloquial Andalusian Arabic word for “outside, exterior”, which in the classical language is borrowed from Arabic بَرِيّ (bariyy, “wild”).^{[3][4][2][5][1]} Corominas starts from the Arabic word for the outskirts of a town, or more precisely from its derivative meaning “exterior”.^[2] Wiktionary explains the sense from the outlying, less urbanised parts of a town.^[1] Houaiss has the word pass through Late Latin barrium, which a Latin document of Zamora already uses in 949.^[3][2]

Houaiss also gives a second explanation: a noun Vulgar Latin *barra (“crossbar, partition”), with an adjective *barriu- “lying outside”, from which the Portuguese and Spanish words would come.^[3] He notes that the sense “part of a town” is later than “outskirts, suburb”.^[3]

The diphthong goes back to the older Old Galician-Portuguese barrio, with the /j/ of the ending drawn into the stressed syllable, a change Vieira called regular.^[6][1]

The same word is Spanish barrio, Catalan barri and Old Occitan barri, the Occitan form recorded from the 12th century in Bertran de Born.^[2] It passed into Basque barrio “yard, farmyard”.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss's first date, 968, is a charter of the Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, the collection of Latin documents, where the word appears as barra.^[3] The first Portuguese record Corominas cites is barrio in a document of 1301 from Trás-os-Montes.^[2] In 1372 bairro meant a settlement next to a town.^[3] Corominas finds the same first sense, a hamlet dependent on a town, in the oldest Spanish documents.^[2]

Semantic evolution

From a settlement outside a town the word came to mean a suburb, and then a quarter inside the town: Houaiss dates the sense “part of a town” to 1611.^[3] In Spanish Corominas traces the same path, while in Occitan and Catalan the word went from the suburb to the wall around it and then to a fence or enclosure.^[2] Medieval Latin barrium already meant both a rampart and a suburb.^[7]

Bluteau defines it as a part of a town with its houses and streets, and notes that around Santarém it meant the same as monte.^[8] Vieira describes Lisbon as divided into four bairros: Alfama, Rocio, Alto and Alcântara.^[6] The old Caldas Aulete records the administrative bairros of Lisbon and Porto, each headed by an administrador de bairro, and a sense “village, hamlet” in Minas Gerais.^[9] The derivatives bairrista and bairrismo, for a person attached to his own quarter, date from the 19th and 20th centuries.^[4] In Mozambique bairro names a periurban settlement of shacks.^[10]

Timeline

• 949 – barrium in a Latin document of Zamora.^[2]
• 968 – barra in a Latin charter.^[3]
• 1301 – barrio in a document from Trás-os-Montes.^[2]
• 1321 – the spelling barrho.^[3]
• 1372 – bairro, a settlement next to a town.^[3]
• 1513 – the Livro dos Mártires uses the word.^[11]
• 1569 – Cardoso translates it by Latin regio.^[12]
• 1611 – bayrro in the sense “part of a town”.^[3]
• 1712 – Bluteau notes the Santarém sense “hill”.^[8]
• 1836 – first record of bairrista.^[4]
• 1871 – Vieira lists the four bairros of Lisbon.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A district or neighbourhood of a town or city: Mudámo-nos para um bairro sossegado.^[3][13][1]
2. An area lived in mainly by people of the same class, origin or trade.^[3][10][14]
3. (Portugal, historical) Each of the administrative or fiscal divisions of Lisbon and Porto.^[10][14]
4. A populated area on the outskirts of a town;^[3][13] (Brazil, Minas Gerais) a small village or hamlet.^[3][13]
5. (Mozambique) A settlement of shacks without basic services on the edge of a town; in Portugal bairro de lata, a shanty town.^[10][14]

Word family

• bairrista
• bairrismo

Related words

• Spanish barrio
• Late Latin barrium

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 527
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. bairro
4. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. bairro
5. ^ Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. barrio
6. ^ 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, 706
7. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. barrium
8. ^ 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. bairro
9. ^ 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. bairro
10. ^ a b c d 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. bairro
11. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. bairro
12. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. bairro
13. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. bairro
14. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. bairro