curioso

Forms

curioso (feminine curiosa, masculine plural curiosos, feminine plural curiosas, diminutive curiosinho, metaphonic)^[1] Old spellings are corioso (14th century) and coriosso (15th century), beside curioso from the 15th century.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin cūriōsus (“careful, diligent; inquisitive”), first recorded in the 14th century as Old Galician-Portuguese corioso.^[2] Nascentes calls it learned, while Wiktionary treats it as inherited.^[3][1]

The same Latin word is Spanish curioso, Catalan curiós, Italian curioso and Romanian curios.^[1][4]

The OLD forms the Latin adjective cūra (“care”) with the suffix -ōsus.^[5][1] Wiktionary takes it as a back-formation from incūriōsus (“careless”).^[5][1] De Vaan traces the noun to Proto-Italic *kwois-ā- (“care, watch”), from the root Proto-Indo-European *kwei-s- (“to heed”).^[6]

Semantic evolution

The Latin adjective meant first “careful, painstaking” and then “eager to know”.^[5] Houaiss gives the sense “zealous, careful” first, and Morais (1789) still has it beside “endowed with curiosity”.^[2][7] Bluteau (1712–1728) defines the curious man as one fond of knowing things that are no concern of his.^[8]

Morais also records the noun for someone who practises an art without having learned it from a master, the amateur of today.^[7] In Brazil the curioso is also a folk healer, and in the north-east an unlettered man who knows a little of everything.^[2][9] The sense “odd, interesting”, said of things, is in Silva Bastos (1912).^[10] Caldas Aulete records the regional Portuguese sense “skilful, clever”.^[11]

Timeline

• 14th century – first record, spelt corioso.^[2]
• 15th century – the spellings curioso and coriosso.^[2]
• c. 1510 – the Vida de Santo Agostinho (copied 1480–1510) uses curioso.^[12]
• 1561 – curiosos in a private letter.^[13]
• 1712 – Bluteau defines it as fond of knowing what does not concern one.^[8]
• 1789 – Morais records the noun for an amateur.^[7]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Careful, zealous (zeloso).^[2][14]
2. curious, eager to see, hear or learn: Era um aluno curioso e fazia muitas perguntas.^[2][1]
3. (pejorative) Prying, nosy.^[2][15]
4. Moved by curiosity: espreitava a rua com ar curioso.^[2][14]
5. Interesting, odd, surprising.^[2][1]

Noun

1. A curious person; an onlooker.^[2][1]
2. (Brazil, informal) An amateur, someone who practises a trade without training.^[2][15]
3. (Brazil, informal) A folk healer.^[2]

Word family

• curiosamente

Related words

• curiosidade
• cura
• Latin cūra
• Spanish curioso

Usage notes

Bluteau reports the derivation of the master Venegas, who took curiosus from the Latin adverb cur “why?”, because the curious are great askers of questions.^[8] The plural is pronounced with open /ɔ/, curiosos.^[15]

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. curioso
3. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. curioso
4. ^ Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. curioso
5. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. cūriōsus
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b c 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, 356
8. ^ a b c Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. curioso
9. ^ Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. curioso
10. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. curioso
11. ^ 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. curioso
12. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. curioso
13. ^ CLUL (ed.) (2014), P.S. Post Scriptum: Arquivo Digital de Escrita Quotidiana em Portugal e Espanha na Época Moderna, Lisboa: Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, http://ps.clul.ul.pt, p. s.v. curioso
14. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. curioso
15. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. curioso