banco

Forms

banco m (plural bancos)^[1] Houaiss records bamco in 1446, and Feijó (1734) still lists the spelling banquo.^[2][3]

Etymology

For the seat, it is borrowed from Frankish *bank (“bench fixed to the wall along a room”), according to Houaiss;^[2][4][5] Machado and Aurélio speak of a Germanic word that came into Vulgar Latin and then into the western Romance languages.^[2][4][5] Nascentes, following Meyer-Lübke, gives a Gothic source instead.^[6] Houaiss takes the senses “bank” and “sandbank” from Italian banca, which Corominas says first meant a stall for selling goods.^[2] Wiktionary instead derives the whole word from Italian banco.^[1] Corominas likewise, for Spanish banco, separates an old Germanic word, first recorded in the Libro de Alexandre, from the sense “credit house”, borrowed from Italian in the 16th century; in Italy that sense goes back to 1340.^[7]

The Germanic word is Proto-Germanic *bankiz (“bench”), which also gave Old English benc, Old Norse bekkr and Old High German banc.^[8][9] Kroonen links it with *bankan- (“slope, cliff”), perhaps through a sense “elevation”, and Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Indo-European *bʰeg- (“to bend”).^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Machado quotes the word in a Latin legal text of the 11th century, Et de uestros bancos ubi uenderetis carnes “and of your benches where you sold meat”.^[4][2] Cunha dates the Portuguese word for the seat to the 13th century.^[10] Houaiss records bamco “bank” in 1446;^[2][10][4] Cunha and Machado date that sense to 1508, when a document in the Corpo Diplomático Português says “the bank lent me two thousand ducats”.^[2][10][4] The sense “sandbank” appears in the 15th century, in the Guiné that Machado quotes, where a caravel runs onto hũu banco de area.^[4][2]

Semantic evolution

Cardoso (1569) and Pereira (1697) gloss banco with Latin subsellium and scamnum “bench”.^[11][12] Barbosa (1611) adds the money-changer's bank, the rowers' bench and the phrase fazer banco roto “to go bankrupt”.^[13] Bluteau (1712–1728) derives the word from German or from a Low Latin bancus, and reports Vossius's idea that bancus came from Latin abacus.^[14] Morais (1789) adds the carpenter's bench.^[15]

Later senses include the reception room for outpatients of a hospital, a layer of stone in a quarry, a large shoal of fish and an iceberg.^[16][17] Modern dictionaries add the sense “store of blood or organs” and, in Brazilian football, “the reserve players”.^[5][18] In Bahia banco also names the shell mounds left by ancient coastal peoples.^[19] The word passed into Konkani, Gujarati and Malay.^[1]

Timeline

• 11th century – bancos “benches” in a Latin legal text.^[4]
• 13th century – first record of banco “seat”, according to Cunha.^[10]
• 1446 – bamco “bank”, according to Houaiss.^[2]
• 15th century – banco de area “sandbank” in the Guiné quoted by Machado.^[4]
• 1508 – ho banco me emprestou dois mil ducados.^[4][10]
• 1569 – Cardoso lists Banco as Latin subselium.^[11]
• 1611 – Barbosa records the rowers' bench and fazer banco roto.^[13]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau discusses the origin of the word.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A long seat for several people, with or without a back; a bench; also a stool for one person.^[2][20][1]
2. A craftsman's workbench.^[5][21]
3. The seat of the accused in a court: sentar-se no banco dos réus.^[20]
4. (sports, Brazil) The substitute players who wait on the bench.^[18][1]
5. A sandbank, shoal or reef that rises close to the surface of the sea or a river.^[2][18][1]
6. A large shoal of fish; a mass of floating ice.^[17]
7. A financial institution that takes deposits and lends money; a bank; the building where it does business.^[5][22][1]
8. (medicine) A store of blood, organs or tissue kept for transfusion or transplant; by extension any store, as in banco de dados “database”.^[5][22][1]
9. (Portugal) The emergency department of a hospital.^[22]

Word family

• bancar
• bancário
• banqueiro
• banquinho
• bancada

Related words

• banca
• Spanish banco

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. banco
3. ^ 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. banco
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. s.v. banco
5. ^ a b c d e f Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. banco
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 61
7. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 485
8. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 51
9. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 36
10. ^ a b c d e Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. banco
11. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. banco
12. ^ 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. banco
13. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. banco
14. ^ 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. banco
15. ^ 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, 62
16. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 171
17. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. banco
18. ^ a b c 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. banco
19. ^ Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. banco
20. ^ a b 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. banco
21. ^ 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. banco
22. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 1244