branco

Forms

branco (feminine branca, masculine plural brancos, feminine plural brancas, comparable, comparative mais branco, superlative o mais branco or branquíssimo, diminutive branquinho, augmentative brancão)^[1] Houaiss records blanca (1251), blanquo (1283) and blancho (1294), with branco from the 13th century.^[2] Lorenzo also has blanco in 1251, and a woman's name Brance in 1274.^[3]

Etymology

It is a Germanic word, according to Wiktionary borrowed from Frankish *blank (“shining, white”), which reached Portuguese through the Medieval Latin blancus.^[1] Houaiss, Cunha and Machado derive it from the Germanic adjective without naming a particular Germanic language.^[2][4][5] Nascentes, following Meyer-Lübke, has it come through Old Occitan blanc.^[6] In Portuguese, as in Spanish and Italian, the Germanic adjective took the place of Latin albus (“white”).^[5][6]

The oldest records still have bl-, as in Old Galician-Portuguese blanquo in 1283.^[2] The later form shows the change of /l/ to /ɾ/ after a consonant at the start of a word.^[1] Corominas takes the kept cluster bl- in Spanish blanco as a sign that the word came late, surely from France.^[7]

The same Germanic word is Galician branco, Catalan blanc, French blanc and Italian bianco.^[5][1] It is Proto-Germanic *blankaz, an adjective to the verb *blinkaną (“to shine”).^[8][1] Kroonen gives it the sense “colourless”, and its relatives Old High German blanc (“shining, white”), Dutch blank (“white”) and Old Norse blakkr (“dun-coloured”).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss's date of 1251 is a Latin text, the Leges: corrigia nigra uel blanca “a black or white strap”, with the Romance word for white.^[5][2] In Galician-Portuguese the word is common from the second half of the 13th century: the Cantigas de Santa Maria have en seu cavalo branqu' “on his white horse” and un pano branco “a white cloth”, and Martin Soarez sings of a lady branca e vermelha “white and red”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Nascentes and Aurélio see the old sense “shining” still in arma branca “steel weapon, blade”.^[6][9] The Crónica Troiana compares a woman's whiteness with snow and the lily, an image the Cantigas de Santa Maria share (mais branco que un armỹo “whiter than an ermine”).^[3] Morais (1789) adds “grey-haired”, assinar em branco “to sign a blank paper”, the white of the eye and the white of a target.^[10] Figueiredo (1899) has the white race, the white of an egg and an unwinning lottery ticket.^[11]

In colonial Brazil branco was a slave's word for his master, and then for any person of rank.^[2] In Portuguese Africa it meant a Portuguese, and in Brazil today dar um branco is a sudden blank in the memory.^[2][1] The word passed into the Portuguese creoles: Kabuverdianu bránku, Guinea-Bissau branku, Angolar baanku.^[1]

Timeline

• 1251 – blanca in a Latin text of the Leges.^[5][2]
• 1274 – a woman's name, domne Brance, in a Latin document.^[5][3]
• 1283 – the spelling blanquo.^[2]
• 13th century, second half – branco in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[3]
• 1416 – first record in the CTA corpus, in the Vida de Santo Aleixo.^[12]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses branco with the Latin candidus.^[13]
• 1789 – Morais records assinar em branco and o branco do olho.^[10]
• 1871 – Vieira derives the word from Old High German blanch.^[14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. white, of the colour of fresh snow or milk.^[2][9][1]
2. Lighter in colour than others of its kind: vinho branco “white wine”, uva branca.^[2][15]
3. pale, drained of colour from fear or illness.^[2][9][1]
4. Grey-haired, hoary.^[2][16]
5. Of a person: white, of light skin.^[2][17][1]
6. Not written on; blank (of paper or a form).^[2][18]
7. (figurative) Pure, free of evil intent: magia branca.^[2]
8. (verse) Unrhymed: verso branco “blank verse”.^[2][16]

Noun

1. The colour white; white clothes.^[2][15][1]
2. A white person.^[2][1]
3. White paint or pigment.^[2][19]
4. (Brazil, historical) A slave's master; a person of rank.^[2]
5. (Brazil, informal) A sudden lapse of memory: deu-me um branco.^[2][1]
6. (printing) A space wider than the ordinary spacing on a printed page.^[2][16]

Word family

• branca
• brancacento
• brancura
• branqueamento
• branquear
• embranquecer
• embranquecimento
• esbranquiçado
• esbranquiçar

Related words

• alvo
• Galician branco
• Spanish blanco

Usage notes

Houaiss also has two printing terms spelt branco, short for material branco (the spacing material) and forma de branco.^[2] The set phrase em branco means “blank, unfilled” and also “in vain” or “without sleep”.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o 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 w x Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. branco
3. ^ a b c d e 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. branco
4. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. branco
5. ^ a b c d e f Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. s.v. branco
6. ^ a b c Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 77
7. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 598
8. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 67
9. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. branco
10. ^ a b 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, 195
11. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 207
12. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. branco
13. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. branco
14. ^ 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, 813
15. ^ a b 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. branco
16. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. branco
17. ^ 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. branco
18. ^ 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. branco
19. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 1516