curar

Forms

curar (first-person singular present curo, first-person singular preterite curei, past participle curado)^[1] Houaiss records curar and cuyrar in 14th-century texts.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin cūrō (“to take care of, look after”), written Old Galician-Portuguese curar in the oldest texts.^[2][3][4][1] Houaiss glosses the Latin verb as “to care for, treat, watch over, clean”.^[2]

The same Latin verb gave Galician curar, Spanish curar, Catalan curar and Italian curare, and French curer, which in French means “to clean out”.^[5][6][1] Old Spanish also had curiar “to look after”, which García de Diego explains by the influence of its synonym cudiar.^[6]

The Latin verb is formed from cūra (“care, anxiety”).^[7][1] De Vaan traces the noun to Proto-Italic *kʷoizā (“care, watch”) and Proto-Indo-European *kʷeys- (“to heed”), and notes that inscriptions of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC still write the verb with ⟨coira-⟩ and ⟨coera-⟩, with the older diphthong.^[8] The Paelignian and Umbrian forms are its Italic cognates.^[7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the oldest texts the verb means “to care about, pay heed to”, usually with the preposition de.^[9] The cantigas d'amigo use it so, and Pedro, Count of Barcelos, writes ca da pequena nom cura “for he does not care about the young girl”.^[10][11] The Crónica Troiana says of Achilles that he lay in his tent et nõ curaua da batalla “and paid no heed to the battle”, and also has the sense “to take care of”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

From “to look after” (a sick person) the verb became the word for treating and healing.^[5] Cunha gives “to take care of, watch over, free from illness” together for the 13th century.^[3] The Horto do Esposo, copied in the first half of the 15th century, is the first CTA text with the word.^[12] The 16th- and 17th-century dictionaries translate it with Latin curo, sano and medeor, the medical sense.^[13][14] Morais (1813) defines it as giving remedies to make someone recover, with the figurative sense “to remedy”.^[15]

The old sense of caring for things lives on in technical uses: drying or smoking meat and cheese, bleaching linen in the sun, curing olives and hides.^[2][16][17] In southern Brazil one “cures” a new gourd for mate by filling it with used herb for several days.^[18] Houaiss also records an archaic sense “to provide a parish with a priest”, from 14th-century texts, and Brazilian uses for folk healing and for ritual protection.^[2] The DLP adds a regional sense, spraying vines with sulphate, and a Brazilian slang one, “to kill”.^[19]

Timeline

• 13th century – first record, in the senses “to care about” and “to free from illness”.^[3]
• 14th century – Houaiss's first date, from Cunha's medieval index, with the spellings curar and cuyrar.^[2]
• c. 1430 – the Horto do Esposo, the first CTA text with the verb.^[12]
• 1569 – Cardoso translates Curar with Latin curo.^[13]
• 1697 – Pereira gives Latin sano, medeor and curo.^[14]
• 1813 – Morais defines the verb as giving remedies against an illness.^[15]
• 1871 – Vieira derives it from Latin curare.^[20]

Meanings

Verb

1. To cure or heal someone, restore to health;^[2][21][1] (reflexive) to recover: O médico curou a criança em poucas semanas.^[2][21][1]
2. To get rid of an illness or a wound by treating it.^[2][22]
3. To practise medicine.^[2]
4. (figurative) To cure someone of a vice or bad habit;^[2][21][23] (reflexive) to mend one's ways.^[2][21][23]
5. To bleach cloth by laying it in the sun; to corar.^[2][21]
6. To dry or smoke food in the heat of a fire or the sun; to mature cheese: curar um queijo.^[2][24]
7. To care for, see to something (with de).^[2][19]
8. (Brazil) To prepare a material, such as wood or a mate gourd, for use.^[2][18]
9. (Brazil, ethnology) To heal by folk or magical means; to give ritual protection against harm.^[2]
10. (regional, Portugal) To spray vines with sulphate.^[19]
11. (obsolete) To provide a parish with a priest.^[2]

Word family

• curado
• curável
• incurável

Related words

• cura
• curador
• curandeiro
• curativo
• Latin cūra
• Galician curar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. curar
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. cura
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. curar
5. ^ 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. s.v. curar
6. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. curare
7. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. cūrō
8. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
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. curar
10. ^ a b 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. curar
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. curar
12. ^ a b Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. curar
13. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. curar
14. ^ a b Pereira, Bento (1697), Thesouro da lingoa portuguesa, in the 1697 edition of his Prosodia (1st ed. 1647; CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. curar
15. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 504
16. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. curar
17. ^ 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. curar
18. ^ a b Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. curar
19. ^ a b c 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. curar
20. ^ 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, 672
21. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. curar
22. ^ 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. curar
23. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. curar
24. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 2637