boca

Forms

boca f (plural bocas)^[1] Houaiss records boquua from the 14th century and bocha from the 15th;^[2][3] Silva Bastos still gives bocca as a variant in 1912.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin bucca (“cheek; mouth”), written Old Galician-Portuguese boca in the oldest texts.^[2][4][5][1] The same Latin word is Galician boca, Spanish boca, Catalan boca, French bouche, Italian bocca and Romanian bucă.^[6][1]

The first sense of the Latin noun was the puffed-out cheek, and “mouth” was a familiar, at first rather contemptuous, use beside the ordinary word ōs.^[7][8][5] Corominas notes that “mouth”, though the rarer sense in Latin, is the one that won in nearly all the Romance languages, from Dalmatian to Portuguese, while the sense “cheek” survives in Romanian and in the Latin loans of Breton and Welsh.^[9] Nascentes points out that Cicero had already used the word for “mouth”.^[10]

The origin of the Latin word is not settled: Wiktionary and the DLE call it Celtic, comparing boc(c)a.^[1][11] De Vaan reports that Ernout and Meillet suspected a Celtic origin because the word resembles beccus (“beak”) and Celtic personal names such as Buccus, and he himself sees it as one of the abusive words in which Latin often doubles a consonant.^[7] The OLD calls it imitative.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Machado and the DDGM quote a Latin charter of 1085 in which the Romance word already appears: usque ad bocca de carreira antiqua “as far as the mouth of the old road”, in the sense of an opening or entrance.^[5][12] Houaiss dates that sense to 1085 and the sense “mouth” to the 13th century.^[2] In Galician-Portuguese the Cantigas de Santa Maria tell how Mary made a flower grow na boca of a cleric, and a cantiga d'escarnho has che tapo eu daquesta minha / boca a ta boca “I stop your mouth with this mouth of mine”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

From the mouth of a body the word spread early to openings of all kinds: the 1085 charter already uses it for the opening of a road.^[2][5] Barbosa's dictionary of 1611 has boca do rio for the mouth of a river, boca de forno for the mouth of an oven and boca da noyte for nightfall, and Morais in 1789 adds boca for a person to be fed, the mouth of a cannon and bocas de fogo “firearms”.^[13][14] Houaiss dates the sense “notch in a blade” to 1789.^[2]

Brazilian, African and Mozambican Portuguese use boca for the burner of a gas stove.^[2] In Brazil it also came to mean an opportunity or a job, and in criminal slang a place where drugs are sold (boca de fumo); in Portugal a boca is a taunting or provocative remark.^[2][1] The word passed into Kabuverdianu as bóka and into Guinea-Bissau Creole and Kristang as boka.^[1]

Timeline

• 1085 – a Latin charter has usque ad bocca de carreira antiqua.^[5][12]
• 13th century – first records of the sense “mouth”, in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the cantigas d'escarnho.^[2][4][12]
• 14th century – the spelling boquua.^[2]
• c. 1430 – boca in the Horto do Esposo.^[15]
• 15th century – the spelling bocha.^[2]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses Boca with Latin os.^[16]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists boca do rio, boca da noyte and the proverb em boca cerrada não entra mosca.^[13]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau has a pedir de boca “just as one would wish”.^[17]
• 1789 – Morais lists boca for a person to be fed and for the mouth of a cannon.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. (anatomy) The mouth: the opening in the head through which food is taken, and the cavity behind it.^[2][18][1]
2. The lips and the outline they form.^[2]
3. Any opening that suggests a mouth; the open end of a bottle, bag, tunnel or well; the bottom of a trouser leg.^[2][1]
4. The mouth of a river, where it flows into the sea.^[13][1]
5. A notch in the edge of a blade.^[2]
6. (Brazil, Africa) A burner of a stove.^[2][1]
7. A person to be fed: tem quatro bocas em casa.^[2][14]
8. The beginning of something: a boca da noite “nightfall”.^[2][13]
9. (Brazil, informal) An opportunity, especially for easy money; a job.^[2]
10. (Brazil, slang) A place where illegal drugs are sold.^[2][1]
11. (Portugal, informal) A taunting or provocative remark.^[2]

Word family

• bocado
• bocal
• bocarra
• boquinha
• boquiaberto
• boqueirão
• boqueira
• desbocado
• abocar

Related words

• boquilha
• bucal
• bocejar
• abocanhar
• Latin bucca
• Galician boca

Usage notes

The proverb em boca fechada não entra mosca (in Barbosa em boca cerrada…) “no fly gets into a closed mouth” recommends silence.^[13] A pedir de boca means “exactly as one would wish”.^[17]

Houaiss also records an interjection boca, pronounced with open /ó/, used to set dogs on to seize something; it is the imperative of the verb bocar, first listed by Figueiredo in 1899.^[2]

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 j k l m n o p q r s t u v Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. boca
3. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. boca
4. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. boca
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. boca
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1357
7. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. bucca
9. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 603
10. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. s.v. boca
11. ^ 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. boca
12. ^ 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. boca
13. ^ a b c d e Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. boca
14. ^ a b c 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, 184
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. boca
16. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. boca
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. boca
18. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. boca