carabina

Forms

carabina f (plural carabinas)^[1] The 17th-century documents write carauina and carauinha;^[2][1] carabina is recorded from 1712.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French carabine, a short arquebus with a smooth bore, recorded in French from 1611 and as charabine at the end of the 16th century.^[3][4][2][1] The French word is from carabin (“light cavalryman”) (about 1583), the soldier who carried it, a word of uncertain origin.^[3][5][6] The DHLF suggests it may be an altered form of Middle French escarrabin (“burier of plague victims”) (1521), a word from the Occitan area that probably belongs with French escarbot (“dung beetle”), and Wiktionary follows this chain back to Latin scarabaeus (“beetle”) and Ancient Greek κάραβος (kárabos, “beetle; crayfish”).^[5][1] Vieira reports Diez's older conjecture linking it with calabre (“a siege engine”).^[7]

The older Portuguese dictionaries derived the word from Spanish: Silva Bastos and Figueiredo give Spanish carabina, and Leite de Vasconcelos argued for Spanish because the ending is ⟨-ina⟩ and not ⟨-inha⟩.^[8][9][10] The first edition of Aurélio gave Italian carabina, the later Aurélio French.^[11][12] The Spanish word is itself from French and is recorded only from the third quarter of the 17th century, after the Portuguese one.^[6]

Portuguese also has the divergent forms clavina and cravina of the same word.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is carauina in a document of 1644 published in the Arquivos de Angola, followed by carauinha and cravina in the 1660s.^[3][4] From the start it named a short firearm.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau has the modern spelling carabina in 1712.^[3] Morais (1789) defines it as a firearm shorter than the musket and notes that the cavalry regulations call it clavina.^[13] Aulete describes a short, rifled gun used by the cavalry, the artillery and light infantry, and modern dictionaries extend the word to any light rifle used for hunting and sport.^[14][15] The soldiers who carried it were carabineiros, a word recorded from 1680.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1583 – French carabin “light cavalryman”.^[5]
• 1611 – French carabine, after charabine at the end of the 16th century.^[3]
• 1644 – first Portuguese record, spelt carauina.^[3][4]
• 1660 – the divergent form cravina.^[4]
• 1680 – first record of carabineiro.^[4]
• 1704 – first record of clavina.^[4]
• 1712 – the spelling carabina.^[3]
• 1789 – Morais's dictionary lists carabina and the cavalry's clavina.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A carbine: a short gun with a rifled barrel, formerly carried by cavalry and light infantry; clavina.^[3][14][1]
2. A light rifle used for hunting and sport shooting.^[15][1]

Word family

• carabineiro
• carabinada

Related words

• clavina
• cravina
• espingarda
• French carabine
• Spanish carabina

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. carabina
3. ^ 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. carabina
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. carabina
5. ^ a b c Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. carabin
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 843
7. ^ 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, 100
8. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. carabina
9. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. carabina
10. ^ 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. carabina
11. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda (1975), Novo dicionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, p. s.v. carabina
12. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. carabina
13. ^ 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
14. ^ 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. carabina
15. ^ 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. carabina