cárcere

Forms

cárcere m (plural cárceres)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote carcer and carçer, later carcere, carçere and carçele.^[2][3] Houaiss also records caarcer in the 15th century.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin carcer (“prison; starting gates of a racecourse”), written Old Galician-Portuguese carcer in the oldest texts.^[2][1] In the Cantigas de Santa Maria it is both masculine and feminine.^[3] The REW notes that the word is feminine in French, Occitan, Catalan and Spanish and may not have been inherited everywhere, since the true Romance word was the descendant of Latin prehēnsiō (“seizure”), Portuguese prisão.^[5]

The same Latin word is Spanish cárcel, Galician cárcere, Catalan càrcer, Old French chartre and Italian carcere, and it was borrowed into Germanic, as German Kerker.^[5][6][1]

De Vaan reconstructs a Proto-Italic *karkr(o)- and, with a question mark, a reduplicated *kr-kr- (“circular”), connecting the word with words for “ring, circle”; the original sense would then have been “enclosure”.^[7] Wiktionary gives *karkros and the same reduplicated root, and calls the word a doublet of Latin cancer.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantigas de Santa Maria tell of a man the king had thrown at once into a carcer (o fezera porende tan tost' en un carcer deitar), and praise the Virgin, through whose Son a carcer escura u yamos “the dark prison in which we were” was broken.^[3] In a cantiga d'escarnho Martin Soarez puts a man in a cárcer where many prisoners had lain.^[8] The first sense is “prison”.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

The Crónica Troiana and the Crónica Geral use carçer for the prison into which captives are thrown.^[4] Morais (1813) records cárcere privado, the offence of keeping someone shut up without right outside the public jail, from the Ordinances, and a printer's sense, the buítra of the old hand press.^[9] Vieira (1871) adds the cells of the Inquisition and of convents, and the figurative prison of the winds in Camões.^[10] The sense “starting gates of the Roman circus” was taken from Latin.^[2][11] The DLP extends the figurative sense to any place or situation that restricts a person's freedom.^[12] In north-eastern Portugal cárcere is a crosspiece of the ox cart.^[13]

Timeline

• 13th century, second half – carcer in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[3]
• c. 1430 – carcer in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[14]
• 1496 – carçere in the História de mui nobre Vespasiano.^[15]
• 1813 – Morais records cárcere privado and the printer's sense.^[9]
• 1871 – Vieira quotes Camões's prison of the winds.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. An underground prison; a dungeon, calabouço.^[2][11]
2. A jail, prisão: Passou dez anos no cárcere.^{[2][11][16][1]}
3. The cell in which a prisoner is kept.^[2][11][12]
4. (figurative) Anything that confines or hinders; an obstacle.^[2][11][12]
5. (printing, historical) The buítra of the old hand press.^[2][9]
6. (historical) The place in the Roman circus from which the horses started.^[2][11][12]

Related words

• encarcerar
• carcerário
• Latin carcer
• Spanish cárcel
• Galician cárcere

Usage notes

Cárcere privado is the unlawful confinement of a person by a private individual.^[2][11][9]

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. cárcere
3. ^ a b c d e f 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. carcer
4. ^ 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. carçer
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1679
6. ^ Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. cárcere
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ 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. cárcer
9. ^ a b c d Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 345
10. ^ a b Vieira, Frei Domingos (1871–1874), Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da lingua portugueza, 5 vols., Porto: Ernesto Chardron e Bartholomeu H. de Moraes, p. 2, 106
11. ^ a b c d e f g Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. cárcere
12. ^ 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. cárcere
13. ^ Instituto da Lingua Galega, Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués (TLPGP), Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/tesouro, p. s.v. cárcere
14. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. carcer
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. carçere
16. ^ 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. cárcere