bruto

Forms

bruto (feminine bruta, masculine plural brutos, feminine plural brutas, comparable)^[1] The 14th-century texts write bruto, bructo and bruyto.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin brūtus (“heavy; dull, stupid”), taken by the learned route according to Machado, and written Old Galician-Portuguese bruto in the 14th century.^[2][3][4][1] The REW notes that the word appears late everywhere in Romance and is a Latinism.^[5] The same Latin word gave Spanish bruto, recorded from 1440, French brut, borrowed at the end of the 13th century, Catalan brut, Occitan brut and Italian brutto, which means “ugly”.^[6][7][5][8]

De Vaan regards the Latin adjective as a dialect word, probably Sabellic, in which /ɡʷ/ became /b/: from Proto-Italic *gʷrūtos, related to gravis (“heavy”) and grū̃ts (“heavy”).^[9] Wiktionary calls it an Oscan loan and traces it to Proto-Indo-European *gʷréh₂us (“heavy”), the source also of βαρύς (barús) and गुरु (gurú).^[1] Figueiredo's suggestion of a Greek origin is no longer followed.^[10][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the first record to the 14th century from Cunha's medieval index, and Cunha agrees.^[2][3] Lorenzo antedates Machado's 16th-century record with the Galician General Estoria, which has hũa animalia bruta “a brute animal”, and the Galician Historia Troiana calls a country barbara, fascas bruta et neyçia “barbarous, almost brutish and ignorant”.^[11][4] The first sense is “irrational, stupid”, said of animals and people.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The sense “in its natural state, not worked” is in Bluteau (1712), who lists the brute animal, the brutish man and the uncut diamond, and quotes Camões's bruto mar for the sea off Abyssinia.^[12] Vieira quotes Gil Vicente's O bruto animal da serra from the Auto da Mofina Mendes.^[13] Houaiss dates em bruto “not yet developed” to 1844.^[2] The commercial sense, a weight or sum without deductions, is in Figueiredo (1899) and in Silva Bastos (1912), who also has the sense “enormous”.^[10][14]

In informal use, especially in Brazil, bruto means “huge, intense” (um bruto susto); Houaiss notes that Portugal prefers brutal in this sense.^[2][15] In Portugal the noun also names a gull, the kittiwake.^[2][16][17]

Timeline

• 14th century – first records, also spelt bructo and bruyto.^[2][3]
• c. 1430 – the Horto do Esposo (witness 1390–1437) uses the word.^[18]
• 1440 – the Spanish word bruto is first recorded.^[6]
• 1672 – private letters have bruto and brutos.^[19]
• 1712 – Bluteau lists the brute animal, the brutish man and the uncut diamond.^[12]
• 1844 – first date of em bruto “undeveloped”.^[2]
• 1899 – Figueiredo has the sense “complete, without discount”.^[10]

Meanings

Adjective

1. In its natural state, not processed, worked or polished; raw, crude: petróleo bruto, diamante bruto.^[2][20][1]
2. (winemaking) Of champagne: very dry, with less than 1.5 g of residual sugar per litre; brut.^[2]
3. Coarse, rough, badly finished: um móvel bruto.^[2][20]
4. Irrational, senseless.^[2][21]
5. Violent, imposed by force: força bruta.^[2][22]
6. Rude, blunt, ill-mannered.^[2][1]
7. Absurd, nonsensical.^[2]
8. (informal) Very large or intense; huge: levou um bruto susto.^[2][23]
9. Very heavy, massive.^[2]
10. (Brazil) Without deductions; gross: peso bruto, salário bruto.^[2][21][1]
11. (Brazil) Of sugar: unrefined.^[2]

Noun

1. A brute animal, an animal without reason.^[2][16]
2. A brute: a coarse, ignorant or violent person: Não sejas bruto com o cão.^[2][16][1]
3. (Portugal, ornithology) The kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla), a gull.^[2][16][17]

Word family

• brutal
• brutalidade
• bruteza
• abrutalhado
• embrutecer
• embrutecimento

Related words

• Latin brūtus
• Spanish bruto
• French brut

Usage notes

Em bruto means “in the rough, unworked”: madeira em bruto.^[2] Priberam warns against confusing bruto with broto “shoot, bud”.^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. bruto
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. bruto
4. ^ a b Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. s.v. bruto
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1348
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 684
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. brut
8. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 80
9. ^ 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
10. ^ a b c Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 212
11. ^ a b 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. bruto
12. ^ 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. bruto
13. ^ 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, 828
14. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. bruto
15. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. 1, s.v. bruto
16. ^ 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. bruto
17. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 1552
18. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. bruto
19. ^ CLUL (ed.) (2014), P.S. Post Scriptum: Arquivo Digital de Escrita Quotidiana em Portugal e Espanha na Época Moderna, Lisboa: Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, http://ps.clul.ul.pt, p. s.v. bruto
20. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. bruto
21. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. bruto
22. ^ 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. bruto
23. ^ 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. bruto