céu

Forms

céu m (plural céus)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote ceo and çeo, and in the 14th century also ceeo, cééo and seo;^[2][3] Houaiss dates ceu to the 16th century.^[2][3] The dictionaries from Cardoso (1569) to Morais (1789) still head the word Ceo or Céo.^[4][5][6][7]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin caelum (“sky, vault of heaven”), written Old Galician-Portuguese ceo in the oldest texts.^[2][8][1] Houaiss also names the masculine by-form caelus.^[2]

The same Latin word is Galician ceo, Spanish cielo, Catalan cel, French ciel, Italian cielo and Romanian cer.^[9][1]

De Vaan traces the Latin word to Proto-Italic *kailo- “sky” and to a PIE adjective *keh₂i-lo- “whole”.^[10][1] Wiktionary calls this uncertain: the word would come from the language of the augurs, the sky as “the whole” against the templum “the part”, and be related to *hailaz (“whole”), a link Kroonen rejects.^[1] The DHLF mentions an older connection with caedō (“to cut”), the sky being “cut” into regions by the augurs.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the 13th century the word already had both its main senses, the visible sky and the dwelling of God: the Cantigas de Santa Maria call the Virgin a Reinna do Ceo “the Queen of Heaven”, tell of a voice that came de ceo “from heaven”, and of a woman lifted contra o ceo “up towards the sky”.^[3] The Crónica Troiana says that a tent looked like o çeo quando estaua ben estrelado “the sky when it was full of stars”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau (1712–1728) still describes the twelve heavens of the old cosmology, from the Empyrean, the eternal dwelling of the blessed, down to the spheres of the planets.^[6] The old Caldas Aulete keeps this sense as antiquated: each of the solid, transparent spheres around the earth that the ancients imagined to explain the planets' motion.^[13] Morais (1789) gives the upper air, the place of God and the blessed, a sense “region, climate” in a line of Camões, and ceo da boca “palate”.^[7] Other Romance languages also name the palate after the sky, as Romanian cerul gurii does, and in Old French, Old Occitan and Spanish the word could mean “ceiling”.^[9]

The Latin plural was rare before Christianity and spread to render the plural of the Greek and Hebrew Bible.^[11] Portuguese uses it in Reino dos Céus and as an exclamation of surprise or pain, céus!.^[1][14] In Brazil céu de brigadeiro is a clear sky with good flying weather, and céu de cabra means “hell”.^[2][15]

The word passed into the Portuguese-based creoles: seu in Kabuverdianu and Guinea-Bissau Creole, ose in Sãotomense and Principense.^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, spelt ceo.^[2][8]
• 14th century – the spellings ceeo, cééo, çeeo and seo.^[2]
• c. 1430 – ceo in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[16]
• 16th century – the spelling ceu appears.^[2][8]
• 1569 – Cardoso's Portuguese–Latin dictionary heads the word Ceo.^[4]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists Céo estrelado “starry sky” and Céo da boca “palate”.^[5]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau describes the twelve heavens of the old astronomy.^[6]
• 1789 – Morais heads the word CEO.^[7]
• 1878 – first record of a céu aberto “in the open air”.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The sky as the space in which the stars and planets lie and move.^[2][15][1]
2. The part of that space seen from the earth and bounded by the horizon; the firmament (firmamento).^[2][15]
3. The atmosphere, the weather as the sky shows it: Amanhã o céu deve ficar limpo.^[2][17]
4. The upper, often concave part of a frame; a canopy (dossel).^[2][15]
5. (religion, often capitalised) heaven, the dwelling of God, the angels and the souls of the just.^[2][14][1]
6. Any place of happiness and harmony, a paradise; complete well-being.^[2][15]
7. (often plural) Divine providence;^[2][17] God or the gods.^[2][17]
8. (mining) The roof of a vault or of an underground gallery.^[18][19]
9. (anatomy) In céu da boca, the palate.^[2][15]

Word family

• arranha-céus
• sobrecéu
• ceuzinho

Related words

• celeste
• celestial
• cerúleo
• Latin caelum
• Galician ceo
• Spanish cielo

Usage notes

Fixed phrases include a céu aberto “in the open air”, also said of open-cast mining and excavation;^[2] cair do céu “to come at just the right moment”;^[2] mover céus e terras “to try every possible means”;^[2][17] and sétimo céu “the height of happiness”.^[2]

For the idea of “sky”, learned words use the prefixes cel(i)- and uran(i/o)-.^[2]

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 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. céu
3. ^ a b c 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. ceo
4. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. ceo
5. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. céo
6. ^ a b c Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. céo
7. ^ 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, 254
8. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. céu
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1466
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. ciel
12. ^ 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. çeo
13. ^ 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. céu
14. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 1981
15. ^ a b c d e f Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. céu
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. ceo
17. ^ a b c d Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. céu
18. ^ 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. céu
19. ^ 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. céu