cujo

Forms

cujo (feminine cuja, masculine plural cujos, feminine plural cujas)^[1] Old spellings are cugo (1292), cuio and cuyo (14th century) and cuiu (15th century).^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin cuius (“whose”), written Old Galician-Portuguese cujo in the oldest texts.^[2][4][1] The Latin word was a genitive of quī (“who, which”) used as an adjective with its own feminine and neuter forms from Plautus on.^[2][1][5] Houaiss notes that the adjective was a rustic form of archaic Latin that lived on in legal language, and that it survives only in Portuguese and Spanish cuyo.^[2] The REW adds Sardinian cuju of Logudoro.^[6][7]

De Vaan reconstructs the Latin adjective as *kʷosjo- (“whose”), from the genitive Proto-Indo-European *kʷosio, with Oscan púiiu as its Oscan cognate; he compares Ancient Greek ποῖος (poîos, “of what kind?”).^[8][1] The consonantal /j/ of the Latin word between vowels became the Portuguese /ʒ/, written ⟨j⟩.^[2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lorenzo's chronology quotes a charter of 1265, en cuio jur est ia metuda “in whose jurisdiction it is now placed”.^[3] In the Cantigas de Santa Maria it is already the relative of possession: cuja est' alma foi “whose this soul was”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The medieval language also used the word as a noun-like pronoun: the cantigas d'escarnho have cuj' é “whose it is”, and seja cujo quer meant “whoever's it may be, whoever it is”.^[3][9] An archaic adjective meant “bound, dependent”, and a noun cujo “owner” is quoted by Figueiredo from Gil Vicente.^[2][10] In informal Brazilian Portuguese the masculine noun o cujo, or o dito-cujo, is a person one does not want to name, and also the devil.^[2][11]

Timeline

• 1265 – cuio in a charter.^[3]
• 13th century – cuja in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[3]
• 1292 – the spelling cugo.^[2]
• c. 1350 – cujo in the Trasladação de S. Nicolau (14th-century witness).^[12]
• 1789 – Morais condemns o cujo used for o qual as an error.^[13]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. whose, of which: a relative linking a possessor to the thing possessed, agreeing in gender and number with the following noun: o escritor cujos livros li.^[2][14][1]

Adjective

1. (archaic) Bound, dependent, subject (to someone).^[2]

Noun

1. (Brazil, informal) The person already mentioned, whom one does not wish to name; so-and-so (also dito-cujo).^[2][11]
2. (Brazil, informal) The devil.^[2]
3. (obsolete) Owner, master.^[15][10]

Word family

• dito-cujo

Related words

• Latin cuius
• Spanish cuyo

Usage notes

Morais held that o cujo in the sense of o qual “who, which” is an error, since it would mean “the of-which”.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. cujo
3. ^ a b c d e f 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. cujo
4. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. cujo
5. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. cūjus
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2371
7. ^ 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
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. cūius
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. cujo
10. ^ a b Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. cujo
11. ^ 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. cujo
12. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. cujo
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. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. cujo
15. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. cujo