couve

Forms

couve f (plural couves)^[1] The 13th-century Cantigas de Santa Maria have the form col.^[2][3] The form couve is recorded from the 14th century, and couue in the 15th.^[2][4][3] Feijó (1734) gives the popular pronunciation coive beside couve.^[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin caulis (“stalk, stem; cabbage”), which is from Ancient Greek καυλός (kaulós, “stem, stalk”).^[4][2][1][6] Nascentes traces the Portuguese form through *coule and *coue, with the semivowel doubled into /v/, as in ouvir and louvar.^[6][7] Houaiss instead compares Italian cavolo (13th century), the same Latin word with an inserted -v-.^[4] The Latin noun was masculine; it became feminine in Portuguese, as in Spanish.^[6][7] Corominas notes that the feminine gender, found in all three Ibero-Romance languages and in some Sardinian dialects, is already recorded in the 6th century, and that it produced a Late Latin variant caula, known from the 4th century.^[8]

The same Latin word is Galician couve and col, Spanish col, Catalan col and French chou.^[1][9][10] The form Old Galician-Portuguese col of the Cantigas de Santa Maria is the outcome Galician kept, while couve is the Portuguese development, recorded in Galicia only later.^[3]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *kauli- (“stalk”) and, further back, Proto-Indo-European *(s)keh₂u-l-i- (“stem of a plant”), with cognates such as cúal (“bundle of sticks”) and káulas (“bone”).^[11] Houaiss names the learned doublet caule.^[4][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest records have the form col: in the Cantigas de Santa Maria the word appears in phrases of small worth, such as hũa folla de col “a cabbage leaf”, meaning something of no value.^[3] Houaiss and Cunha date couve itself to the 14th century.^[4][2]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept the sense of the vegetable throughout.^[2][4] Barbosa (1611) already distinguishes couve murciana, and Bluteau (1712) explains that this curly-leaved kind was named after the kingdom of Murcia, from where it seems to have reached Portugal.^[12][13] Morais (1813) adds couve tronchuda.^[14] Modern compounds name the cultivated groups: couve-flor, recorded in 1836, couve-de-bruxelas, couve-galega and others.^[2][1] In Brazil couve à mineira is a dish of finely shredded kale fried in fat.^[4][15]

Wiktionary lists words for cabbage borrowed from the Portuguese word in several languages of the East, among them Gujarati, Hindi, Konkani and kubis in Malay.^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century – col in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[3][2]
• 14th century – first records of couve.^[4][2]
• 15th century – the spelling couue.^[4]
• 1611 – Barbosa's dictionary lists couve murciana.^[12]
• 1712 – Bluteau derives the name of the couve murciana from Murcia.^[13]
• 1734 – Feijó gives the form coive beside couve.^[5]
• 1836 – first record of couve-flor.^[2]
• 1899 – Figueiredo records the sense “a variety of pear of Penafiel”.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. cabbage, the plant Brassica oleracea of the crucifer family, with many cultivated varieties: Plantámos couves no quintal.^[4][15][1]
2. kale or collard greens, the leafy kinds grown for their leaves and eaten as a vegetable.^[4][1]
3. (regional, Portugal) A variety of pear of Penafiel.^[16][17]

Word family

• couve-flor
• couve-galega
• couve-de-bruxelas
• couve-lombarda
• couve-portuguesa
• couve-nabo
• couve-rábano
• couve-crespa
• couval

Related words

• caule
• Latin caulis
• Galician col

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. couve
3. ^ 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. col
4. ^ 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. couve
5. ^ a b Feijó, João de Morais Madureira (1734), Orthographia, ou Arte de escrever, e pronunciar com acerto a lingua portugueza, Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. couve
6. ^ a b c Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. couve
7. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 140
8. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 131
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1778
10. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. caulis
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. couve
13. ^ 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. couve
14. ^ Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 489
15. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. couve
16. ^ a b Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 357
17. ^ 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. couve