cantar

Forms

cantar (first-person singular present canto, first-person singular preterite cantei, past participle cantado)^[1] Houaiss records the 14th-century spellings cãtar and quantar.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin cantō (“to sing”), written Old Galician-Portuguese cantar in the oldest texts.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin verb is the frequentative of canō (“to sing”), but in meaning it mostly agrees with the simple verb.^[5][6] The noun “song” is the same word, the infinitive used as a noun, as it already was in Old Galician-Portuguese.^[2][7]

The same Latin word is Galician cantar, Spanish cantar, Catalan cantar, Occitan cantar, French chanter, Italian cantare and Romanian cânta.^[8][1]

The simple verb goes back to *kanō and the Proto-Indo-European present *kh₂n-é-ti, from the root *keh₂n- (“to sing”).^[9][1] Wiktionary lists among its cognates canaid (“sings”) and Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐌽𐌰 (hana, “cock”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the verb to the 13th century from Cunha's medieval index, and Cunha also gives the 13th century.^[2][3] The Cancioneiro da Ajuda uses it both as a verb (cantar nem dizer “to sing nor to speak”) and as a noun for a song or poem: the troubadours speak of fazer un cantar, and Roi Queimado writes fiz meu cantar “I made my song”.^[7] In one cantiga three shepherd girls cantavan d'amor “sang of love”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

In the lyric of the 13th and 14th centuries the noun named the genres of the cantigas: cantar d'amor, cantar d'amigo, cantar d'escarnho and cantar de mal dizer, and cantar de maestria for a poem without a refrain.^[10][7] The Crónica Troiana uses the verb for monks chanting the canonical hours.^[7] Cunha dates cantador to the 14th century and cantadeira to the 16th.^[3]

Bluteau (1712) defines it as “to raise the voice with harmony” and lists cantar o canto chão, to sing plainchant.^[11] Morais (1789) enters only the noun, cantares “songs”, and Os Cantares, the Song of Songs.^[12] The original Caldas Aulete extends the verb to things that make a prolonged sound, such as mills, the wind in the rigging and boiling water.^[13]

Brazilian Portuguese gave the verb the informal senses “to try to talk someone into something” and “to try to seduce with flattery”, the source of cantada “chat-up”;^[2][1] Houaiss also records “to predict, give advance warning of”.^[2][1] In the dialects of Portugal it is said of the creaking of an ox cart and of a hen cackling.^[14] The verb passed into the creoles as kanta (Kabuverdianu, Guinea-Bissau Creole, Papiamentu).^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, both as a verb and as the noun “song”.^[2][3][7]
• 14th century – the spellings cãtar and quantar; first record of cantador.^[2][3]
• c. 1430 – the Horto do Esposo is the first text of the CTA corpus with the verb.^[15]
• 1569 – Cardoso's dictionary renders it by Latin cano and canto.^[16]
• 1712 – Bluteau lists cantar o canto chão.^[11]
• 1789 – Morais enters the noun cantar, plural cantares.^[12]
• 1844 – first record of cantarolar.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive and transitive) To sing: to produce musical sounds with the voice; to perform a piece of music by singing: Ela canta fados.^[2][17][1]
2. (intransitive) Of a bird or other animal: to sing, chirp, crow: Os galos cantaram cedo.^[2][18]
3. (transitive) To recite or chant (prayers, the hours) in plainchant.^[2]
4. (transitive) To read out or call aloud: to call the numbers in a game of bingo, the votes in a count.^[2][19]
5. (transitive) To celebrate in verse or prose: cantar os feitos dos navegadores.^[2][17][6]
6. (intransitive) To creak, squeak (of a hinge or cart).^[2][14]
7. (informal) To predict, warn in advance of.^[2]
8. (Brazil, informal) To try to persuade; to try to seduce with flattering talk.^[2][20][1]
9. (Portugal, informal) To answer back, retort.^[18][20]

Noun

1. A song, a cantiga; a poem set to music; a poem in praise of someone.^[2][18][1]

Word family

• cantador
• cantadeira
• cantante
• cantada
• cantarolar
• cantoria

Related words

• canção
• cantata
• cantatriz
• cântico
• cantiga
• cantor
• canto
• encantar
• Latin cantō
• Galician cantar

Usage notes

Cantar de galo is to have the upper hand or to speak arrogantly, and cantar vitória to boast of a success.^[18] Figueiredo (1899) also enters a separate noun cantar, a Greek and Turkish weight of about 56 kilograms.^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o 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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. cantar
3. ^ a b c d e f Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. cantar
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 94
5. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. canto
6. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. cantar
7. ^ a b c d e 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. cantar
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. cantāre
9. ^ 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 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. cantar
11. ^ 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. cantar
12. ^ a b 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, 227
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. cantar
14. ^ a b 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. cantar
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. cantar
16. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. cantar
17. ^ a b 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. cantar
18. ^ a b c d Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 1754
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. cantar
20. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. cantar
21. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 244