cara

Forms

cara f (plural caras)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin cara (“face”), from Ancient Greek κάρα (kára, “head”).^[2][3][4][1] The Late Latin word is recorded only weakly: once in a glossary, where it is given as Greek, then in medieval Latin documents of Spain.^[1] Nascentes cites it from Corippus's panegyric of Justin in the 6th century.^[5] In Greek the word was poetic and meant only “head”, though Sophocles once used it for “face”.^[6] Wiktionary takes it back to Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₂- (“head; horn; top”), the root of Greek κέρας (kéras, “horn”) and Latin cornū (“horn”).^[1][7]

The same word is Galician cara, Spanish cara, Catalan cara, Occitan cara and Old French chiere (French chère).^[8][1] Corominas doubts the Greek origin: the Greek word is not attested in Vulgar Latin, and the Romance word lives only in Hispania, Gaul, Raeto-Romance and Genoese, where a Greek loan would be expected in Italy and Romania as well.^[6] He suggests that it may be a pre-Roman word, or a Greek word spread by the slang of Roman soldiers.^[6] The Spanish word is first recorded in the poem of the Cid, about 1140.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lorenzo antedates Machado's 15th-century record with the Cantigas de Santa Maria, where the Virgin's milk is poured na boca e na cara “in the mouth and on the face” of a sick monk.^[10] The same collection has a bishop seeing Holy Mary con cara sannuda “with an angry face”, and de cara “head-on, face to face”.^[10] Houaiss dates the noun to the 13th century from the index of medieval Portuguese.^[2]

Semantic evolution

From the face the sense passed to the expression of the face, then to the outward look of a person or a thing, as in ter cara de “to look like”.^[2][3] The Crónica Troiana has a king receiving a gift con moy leda cara “with a very glad face”.^[10] Morais in 1789 records fazer cara “to resist, to oppose” and cara a cara “face to face”.^[11] The face of a coin, opposed to coroa, and the figurative sense “boldness, cheek” (ter cara de “to have the nerve to”) are also old.^[2][3] Figueiredo (1899) and Silva Bastos (1912) record it as slang for two thousand réis.^[12][13]

In Brazil the word became a masculine noun for “a fellow, a guy”, and a form of address between friends.^[2][3][1] DELPo's earliest record of the masculine noun is a text of 1946.^[14] The medieval language also used cara as a preposition “towards” (tirar[on] as pernas cara si “they drew their legs towards themselves”), a use that is still Galician.^[10][15]

Timeline

• 13th century – cara in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[10][2]
• c. 1430 – first record in the CTA corpus, in the Horto do Esposo.^[16]
• 1569 – Cardoso's dictionary glosses it with Latin facies and os.^[17]
• 1611 – Barbosa records the proverb sua cara defende sua pousada, with the Latin “the face shows the character”.^[18]
• 1789 – Morais records fazer cara and cara a cara.^[11]
• 1899 – Figueiredo records the slang sense “two thousand réis”.^[12]
• 1946 – DELPo's first record of the masculine noun “guy”.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. face: the front part of the head, from the forehead to the chin.^[2][3][1]
2. The expression of the face, countenance: cara triste.^[2][3]
3. (figurative) Look, appearance of a person or a thing.^[2][3][1]
4. The side of a coin with the effigy, heads, opposed to coroa.^[2][3][1]
5. (figurative) Boldness, cheek, shamelessness.^[2][3]
6. (Portugal, informal, obsolete) Two thousand réis.^[2][12]
7. (masculine, informal) A person, a guy, a fellow.^[2][3][4][1]
8. (Brazil, informal) A form of address to a friend: olha, cara.^[2][1]

Word family

• acareação
• acarear
• cara-metade
• carinha
• descarar
• encarar
• caradura
• careta

Related words

• Galician cara
• French chère

Usage notes

Houaiss also records cara as the common name of the algae of the genus Chara, a name of scientific Latin from 1753 that Figueiredo's dictionary of 1899 first lists, spelt chara.^[2][19]

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 l m n o Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. cara
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. cara
4. ^ 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. cara
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. s.v. cara
6. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 839
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. chère
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1670
9. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cara
10. ^ 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. cara
11. ^ 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, 231
12. ^ a b c Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. cara
13. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. cara
14. ^ a b NEHiLP – Núcleo de Apoio à Pesquisa em Etimologia e História da Língua Portuguesa, Universidade de São Paulo, DELPo: Dicionário Etimológico da Língua Portuguesa (online database), p. s.v. cara
15. ^ Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. cara
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. cara
17. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. cara
18. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. cara
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. cara