campo

Forms

campo m (plural campos)^[1] Houaiss records canpu in 1296 and quanpo in the 15th century; the Cantigas de Santa Maria write both campo and canpo.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin campus (“plain, open level ground”), written Old Galician-Portuguese campo and Old Galician-Portuguese canpo in the oldest texts.^[2][4][1]

The same Latin word is Galician campo, Spanish campo, Catalan camp, French champ, Italian campo and Romanian câmp.^[5][1] In Latin the tilled field was ager; the use of the Latin word for it is a Romance innovation shared by all the Romance languages and already found in Late Latin.^[6] The sense “battlefield, battle” passed from Latin into German as Kampf.^[5]

The further origin of the Latin word is uncertain: Wiktionary gives the traditional derivation from *kampos and *kh₂emp- (“to bend, curve”), beside καμπή (kampḗ, “bend”) and kam̃pas (“corner”).^[1] De Vaan finds the Latin vowel hard to explain and suggests a European substrate word from the vocabulary of farming.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A Latin charter of 1112 already writes totas illas terras de ille kampo “all those lands of the field”, with the Romance form.^[3] Houaiss dates the Portuguese word to 1260.^[2] The Cantigas de Santa Maria have tanta neve que tod'un canpo foi chẽo “so much snow that a whole field was full” and un campo u aradores... aravan “a field where ploughmen were ploughing”.^[3] In the Crónica Geral the word means a plain, often named after a place, and also the battlefield and the pitched battle.^[3]

Semantic evolution

From open level ground the word came to mean the cultivated field and the country outside the towns.^[2][8] As in the other Romance languages it was also the ground where an army camps or fights: Morais (1813) records campo for the military camp, for the troops in it and for the place of battle, and Bluteau's book of synonyms gives it as a word for an army.^[9][10][6] In heraldry, already in the cantigas, it is the field of a shield.^[11][12]

Later senses are the field of vision of an optical instrument or a camera, the sports ground, the field of physics and the domain of an activity or a science.^[2][13] In Brazil campo is open grassland, set against the forest (mata), and in Rio Grande do Sul many kinds of it are named by their pasture.^[14][15]

The word passed into Guinea-Bissau Creole and Tetum as kampu.^[1]

Timeline

• 1112 – a Latin charter writes de ille kampo.^[3]
• 1260 – first record of the Portuguese word.^[2]
• 13th century – campo and canpo in the Cantigas de Santa Maria;^[3][4] canpal “of the field” in the same century.^[3][4]
• 1296 – the spelling canpu.^[2]
• c. 1430 – campo in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[16]
• 1569 – Cardoso renders Campo by Latin ager and campus.^[17]
• 1813 – Morais records the military senses “camp” and “troops”.^[9]
• 1889 – Beaurepaire-Rohan describes the Brazilian campo, the grassland opposed to forest.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. Flat, open ground with few trees; a plain.^[2][13]
2. A field used for crops or pasture; a planted field: um campo de milho.^[2][18][1]
3. The countryside, as opposed to the town: Mudaram-se para o campo.^[2][18][1]
4. An open space, room for something.^[2][8]
5. (sport) A pitch or ground marked out for a game.^[2][19][1]
6. (military) A camp; the ground where a battle is fought.^[18][19]
7. (cinema, photography, television) The area covered by a camera's lens.^[2][20]
8. (physics) A region in which a force acts, as in campo magnético.^[2][21][1]
9. (figurative) A domain of knowledge or activity: o campo da física.^[8][1]
10. (heraldry) The background of a shield on which the charges are placed.^[19][21]

Word family

• acampar
• acampamento
• campal
• campear
• campeiro
• campina
• contracampo

Related words

• campanha
• campus
• Galician campo

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. campo
3. ^ a b c d e f g 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. campo
4. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. campo
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1563
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 791
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. campus
8. ^ a b c 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. campo
9. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 333
10. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. campo
11. ^ 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. campo
12. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 239
13. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. campo
14. ^ a b Beaurepaire-Rohan, Henrique de (1889), Diccionario de vocabulos brazileiros, Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, p. s.v. campo
15. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. campo
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. campo
17. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. campo
18. ^ a b c 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. campo
19. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 1719
20. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. campo
21. ^ a b 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. campo