cuidar

Forms

cuidar (first-person singular present cuido, first-person singular preterite cuidei, past participle cuidado)^[1] Medieval texts have coidar beside cuidar, and later coydar, cudar, cujdar and quidar.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin cōgitō (“to think, consider”), written Old Galician-Portuguese cuidar and Old Galician-Portuguese coidar in the oldest texts.^[3][2][1] The Latin /g/ was lost and the diphthong ⟨oi⟩ then became ⟨ui⟩, which Nunes explains as metaphony.^[5] Corominas traces the same steps in Spanish, from /koyedár/ to /koydár/ and /kuydár/.^[6] The verb meant “to think”; since one thinks about what one pays attention to, it came to mean “to look after”.^[7][2]

The same Latin word is Galician coidar, Spanish cuidar, Catalan cuidar, Old French cuidier (“to believe”) and Old Italian coitare.^[8][1] cogitar is the learned doublet.^[3][1]

The Latin verb is formed from con- and agitō (“to drive, stir”), from agō (“to drive”).^[9][1][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the verb to the 13th century.^[3][2] In the cantigas it means “to think, to judge” and “to brood, to grieve”, as in Afonso Mendez de Besteiros's que já per cuidar morrerei “for I shall die from brooding”; as a noun it means “opinion” in a meu cuidar “in my opinion”.^[4][11]

Semantic evolution

Cardoso's dictionary of 1569 still translates cuidar by Latin opinor and cogito, “to think”.^[12] Morais (1789) gives both “to have in mind” and “to take care of, watch over”, as in cuidar na saúde.^[13] In the same way Spanish cuidar has its modern sense only from the 16th century.^[14]

Today “to take care of” is the main sense, and “to think, to suppose” is literary or regional; dialect surveys in Portugal still record cuidar for “to judge, to think”.^[3][1][15]

Timeline

• 13th century – cuidar and coidar in the cantigas, meaning “to think”.^[3][2][4]
• c. 1450 – the Livro das tres vertudes (witness after 1450) uses the verb.^[16]
• 1569 – Cardoso translates Cuidar by Latin opinor and cogito.^[12]
• 1789 – Morais gives the sense “to take care of”.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. To take care of, to look after a person, animal or thing: Ela cuida dos avós.^[3][1]
2. To be in charge of, to deal with: Eu cuido do jantar.^[3][1][17]
3. To pay attention to, to concern oneself with.^[3][18]
4. To think about, to ponder.^[3][19]
5. (literary, regional) To suppose, to believe: Cuidei que era ele.^[3][1][15]
6. (reflexive) To look after oneself; to be careful, to beware.^[3][1]

Word family

• cuidador
• cuidoso
• descuidar
• descuido
• descuidado

Related words

• cogitar
• cuidado
• cuidadoso
• Latin cōgitō
• Galician coidar
• Spanish cuidar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. cuidar
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. cuidar
4. ^ 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. cuidar
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. 145
6. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 284
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. cuidar
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2027
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. cōgitō
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Lopes, Graça Videira; Ferreira, Manuel Pedro et al. (2011–), Cantigas Medievais Galego-Portuguesas [online database], Lisboa: Instituto de Estudos Medievais, FCSH/NOVA, https://cantigas.fcsh.unl.pt, p. s.v. cuidar
12. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. cuidar
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, 353
14. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuidar
15. ^ a b Instituto da Lingua Galega, Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués (TLPGP), Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/tesouro, p. s.v. cuidar
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. cuidar
17. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 2619
18. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. cuidar
19. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. cuidar