completo

Forms

completo (feminine completa, masculine plural completos, feminine plural completas)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin complētus (“complete, rounded off”), the past participle of compleō (“to fill up”), first recorded in the 16th century.^[2][3][1][4] Nascentes calls it a learned word and glosses the Latin form “entirely full”.^[4] The Latin verb is formed from con- and pleō (“to fill”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cunha dates the adjective to the 16th century, with the senses “total, perfect, whole”.^[2] Houaiss's first date for the sense “lacking no part” is 1650, from the Monarquia Lusitana.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Folqman (1755) glosses it “whole, finished” and gives cem anos completos “a full hundred years”.^[6] Morais (1813) has “having all the parts it should”, “perfect” and “finished”.^[7] Vieira adds the botanical sense, of a flower with all its parts.^[8]

Modern dictionaries add “full, with no room left”, said of a hotel or a bus, and in mathematics a complete metric space.^[3][9] In Portugal completo as a noun also names a man's three-piece suit.^[9][10]

Timeline

• 16th century – first record.^[2]
• 1650 – the sense “lacking no part” in the Monarquia Lusitana.^[3]
• 1755 – Folqman's dictionary has cem anos completos.^[6]
• 1813 – Morais defines it as having all its parts.^[7]
• 1813 – first record of incompleto and completar.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. complete, lacking none of its parts: uma coleção completa.^[3][9][1]
2. Total, absolute; perfect of its kind: um completo desastre.^[3][11]
3. Full, with no places left: O comboio já estava completo.^[3][9]
4. Carried out in all its stages; finished, concluído.^[3][11][1]
5. Fulfilled, satisfied.^[3][12]
6. (nutrition) Of a food: providing all the elements the body needs.^[3]
7. (botany) Of a flower: having calyx, corolla, stamens and pistil.^[3][8]
8. (mathematics) Of a metric space: in which every Cauchy sequence has a limit.^[3]

Noun

1. The whole, the total.^[3][12]
2. (Portugal) A man's three-piece suit.^[9][10]

Word family

• incompleto
• completar

Related words

• complemento
• cumprir
• completas
• pleno
• Latin compleō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. completo
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. completo
4. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. completo
5. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. compleo
6. ^ a b Folqman, Carlos (1755), Diccionario portuguez, e latino, Lisboa: Régia Officina Silviana (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. completo
7. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 428
8. ^ a b 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, 352
9. ^ a b c d e 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. completo
10. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 2267
11. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. completo
12. ^ 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. completo