chão

Forms

chão m (plural chãos)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote cháá, chãa, chaão, chãao, chãão and chao.^[2] The feminine of the adjective is chã.^[1][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin plānus (“flat, level”), in its neuter plānum (“level ground”) for the noun, written Old Galician-Portuguese chão in the oldest texts.^[2][3][4][1] Houaiss calls it the popular outcome of the Latin word, beside the learned doublet plano.^[2]

The same Latin word is Galician chan, Spanish llano, Catalan pla, French plain, Italian piano and Sardinian pranu.^[5][1] Corominas notes that the Spanish word, recorded as Old Spanish lano in 1118, is common to all the western Romance languages, and that the learned plano appears in the 17th century.^[6]

De Vaan derives the Latin adjective from *plāno- and Proto-Indo-European *pl(e)h2-nó- (“flattened”), with cognates such as Lithuanian plónas (“thin”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the adjective and the noun to 1261, from Cunha's medieval index, the noun spelt cháá.^[2] The Crónica Troiana has the noun chãos “plains, fields” (en huus grandes chãos), the adjective in hun canpo chão “a level field”, and the figurative sense “mild, even-tempered”.^[8] The troubadours used it in the phrase de chão “surely, truly”.^[9][8]

Semantic evolution

The adjective “flat, level” is the older sense;^[3] Cunha gives the word as an adjective “flat, smooth” and “common, ordinary” from the 13th century.^[3] The noun went from “level ground, plain” to the ground under one's feet and the floor of a house: Barbosa (1611) glosses it with Latin solum, terra and tellus, and Morais (1789) defines it as land for buildings and as the floor.^[10][11] Figueiredo (1899) still records an old land measure, a chão of 60 by 30 spans.^[12]

The adjective lives on in literary and set uses: mar chão “calm sea”, linguagem chã “plain language”, a homem chão “an honest, straightforward man”.^[13][14] Wiktionary now labels it archaic in the sense “flat”.^[1] In Brazilian popular speech chão also means a distance or a time still to come, and in Guinea-Bissau chão is one's native land.^[15][1][16] Macanese has cham.^[1]

Timeline

• 1261 – first record of the noun, spelt cháá, and of the adjective.^[2]
• 1267 – the adjective spelt chão.^[2]
• Crónica Troiana – huus grandes chãos “some great plains” and hun canpo chão “a level field”.^[8]
• 1611 – Barbosa glosses Chão as solum, terra.^[10]
• 1789 – Morais defines the noun as building land and floor.^[11]
• 1899 – Figueiredo records the old land measure.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. The ground, the surface one walks on; the soil: as chaves caíram no chão.^[17][4][1]
2. The floor of a building.^[16][1]
3. Level ground; a small plot of land.^[4][15]
4. (heraldry) The field or background of a shield, picture or fabric.^[17][4]
5. (poetic) The land where one lives;^[15][16][1] (Guinea-Bissau) one's native land.^[15][16][1]
6. (Brazil, informal) Distance or time still to go: ainda há muito chão pela frente.^[15][1]

Adjective

1. Flat, level, smooth.^[14][4][1]
2. Calm, without waves: mar chão.^[14][13]
3. plain, simple, without ornament.^[14][16]
4. Frank, honest, unpretentious.^[14][4]
5. Ordinary, common, trivial.^[14][3]

Word family

• chã
• rechã

Related words

• plano
• lhano
• Latin plānus
• Galician chan
• Spanish llano

Usage notes

Rés do chão is the ground floor in Portugal.^[1] Chã, the feminine of the adjective, is also a noun “plain, level ground”, from the Latin feminine plāna.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. chão
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. chão
4. ^ 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. chão
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6581
6. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 722
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b c 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. chão
9. ^ 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. chão
10. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. chão
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, 262
12. ^ a b Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 283
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. chão
14. ^ a b c d e f Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. chão
15. ^ a b c d e 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. chão
16. ^ a b c d e Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 2001
17. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. chão