cagar

Forms

cagar (first-person singular present cago, first-person singular preterite caguei, past participle cagado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin cacō (“to defecate”), written Old Galician-Portuguese cagar in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1] Cunha calls the Latin verb a word of expressive formation.^[3]

The same Latin verb is Galician cagar, Spanish cagar, Catalan cagar, Occitan cagar, French chier, Italian cacare and Romanian căca.^[4][5][1]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *kak(k)- and compares κακκάω (kakkáō, “to defecate”) and какать (kakatʹ); he takes the verb for a nursery word or an imitation of the sound, and thinks the Germanic verbs such as kacken may have been borrowed from Latin.^[6] Wiktionary sets up a root *kakka-.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the verb to the 13th century.^[2][3] Lorenzo's chronology quotes a cantiga of King Denis about a sick man who con medo per ssy caga “soils himself with fear”, already the figurative use of the reflexive verb.^[7][8]

Semantic evolution

The dictionaries of the 16th and 17th centuries gloss the verb only with its Latin equivalents: Cardoso (1569) with caco and purgare alvum, Barbosa (1611) also with the participle cagado.^[9][10] Morais (1813) adds the reflexive cagar-se “to soil oneself” and labels the word impolite.^[11] Vieira calls it a low word and records a transferred transitive use, to utter maxims or rhetoric.^[12] The original Caldas Aulete warns that the verb and many of its derivatives are indecent and kept out of polite conversation.^[13]

Cunha dates the derivatives cagalhão and caganeira to 1844 and cagaço “fear” to 1873.^[3] In Brazil the verb also means to be lucky, to botch a piece of work or spoil a plan, and not to care at all about someone or something.^[2][14][15]

Timeline

• 13th century – first record of the verb.^[2][3]
• 1569 – Cardoso's Portuguese–Latin dictionary glosses cagar with Latin caco.^[9]
• 1611 – Barbosa gives the Latin participle cacatus for cagado.^[10]
• 1813 – Morais enters cagar-se “to soil oneself” and calls the word impolite.^[11]
• 1844 – first records of cagalhão, caganeira and cagadela.^[3]
• 1873 – first records of cagaço “fear” and caganeta.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (vulgar, intransitive) To defecate, to shit.^[2][15][1]
2. (vulgar, transitive and pronominal) To soil or dirty something or oneself, with excrement or anything else: Caguei-me de óleo.^[2][13][16]
3. (vulgar, pronominal) To be very frightened; to shit oneself with fear.^[2][14][1]
4. (vulgar, intransitive, with para or em) Not to care at all about; to despise: Ele caga para as regras.^{[2][15][16][1]}
5. (Brazil, vulgar) To botch a piece of work, to spoil a plan or an event.^[2][1]
6. (Brazil, vulgar) To be lucky.^[14][15][1]
7. (informal, transitive) To utter boastfully or lightly;^[14][15] cagar regras “to lay down the law”.^[14][15]
8. (Brazil, vulgar, pronominal) To come off badly.^[2][16]

Word family

• cagaço
• cagada
• cagadela
• cagalhão
• caganeira
• caganeta

Related words

• Latin cacō
• Galician cagar

Usage notes

The Brazilian phrase cagar e andar (para) means not to give the slightest importance to something.^[2] The participle cagado is not the noun cágado “turtle”, which differs by its stress.^[14]

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. cagar
3. ^ a b c d e f g Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. cagar
4. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ 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. cagar
8. ^ Universo Cantigas: Glosario da poesía medieval profana galego-portuguesa, A Coruña: Instituto da Lingua e Literatura (ILLA), Universidade da Coruña, https://www.universocantigas.gal, p. s.v. cagar
9. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. cagar
10. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. cagar
11. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 320
12. ^ 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, 30
13. ^ 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. cagar
14. ^ a b c d e f Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. cagar
15. ^ a b c d e f 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. cagar
16. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. cagar