curto

Forms

curto (feminine curta, masculine plural curtos, feminine plural curtas, diminutive curtinho)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin curtus (“docked, mutilated, broken”), written Old Galician-Portuguese curto and Old Galician-Portuguese corto in the oldest texts.^[2][1][3][4] The usual Latin word for “short” was brevis; it was the Romance languages that made the word for something cut short the ordinary word.^[5]

The same Latin word is Galician curto, Spanish corto, Catalan curt, Occitan cort, French court, Italian corto and Romanian scurt, whose s- the REW explains from a compound verb.^[6][7] The /u/ of the Portuguese and Catalan words is unexpected, since a Latin short /u/ normally gave /o/; the REW notes that it is also found in northern Italy, in Friulian and in Vegliote.^[6] Williams puts the word among a group of mostly learned or semi-learned words that kept the Latin /u/.^[8] Nascentes reports that Meyer-Lübke and Cornu found the vowel strange beside cortar, and that Menéndez Pidal took the word for a shortened participle of that verb.^[9]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Italic *kortos, and de Vaan reconstructs a participle meaning “cut off”, cognate with κείρω (keírō, “to cut off, shave”).^[10][1] Wiktionary gives Proto-Indo-European *(s)kr̥tós (“short”), from *(s)ker- (“to cut”), and compares scurz and short.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the word to the 13th century from Cunha's index of medieval Portuguese.^[2] A cantiga d'escarnho of Afonso X mocks men seen wearing very short sleeves (as mangas mui curtas), and the Cantigas de Santa Maria describe a robe that was very short, like that of a little shepherd (era mui curta come d'algũa pastor / pequena).^[11] The first sense is length.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau (1712) gives the word for length, for duration (o tempo da vida he curto “the time of life is short”), for a limited understanding and in curto de palavras “sparing of words”.^[12] Morais (1813) adds curto de vista “short-sighted”.^[13] The original Caldas Aulete has “few in number” and the figurative “narrow-minded, slow-witted”, and the modern dictionaries add “scarce, insufficient”, said of money and time.^[14][2] Wiktionary lists set phrases such as a curto prazo “in the short term” and pavio curto “short fuse”.^[1] As a surname, Curto began as a nickname.^[15]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, as curto and corto.^[2]
• 13th century – a cantiga of Afonso X mocks as mangas mui curtas.^[11]
• c. 1430 – curto in the Horto do Esposo (witness of 1390–1437).^[16]
• 1712 – Bluteau gives the senses of length, duration and limited understanding.^[12]
• 1813 – Morais records curto de vista.^[13]
• 1871 – Vieira derives the word from Latin curtus.^[17]
• 1899 – Figueiredo derives the Latin word from Sanskrit, an explanation of his time.^[18]

Meanings

Adjective

1. short, of little length: calças curtas.^[2][19][1]
2. brief, lasting a short time: uma visita curta.^[2][19][1]
3. scarce, not enough: As provisões estavam curtas.^[2][14]
4. Concise, laconic: uma resposta curta.^[2][14]
5. (figurative) Limited, dull: de inteligência curta.^[2][19]

Word family

• curto-circuito
• encurtar

Related words

• cortar
• Latin curtus
• Spanish corto
• French court

Usage notes

In Brazil curto is also a masculine noun, a shortening of curto-circuito “short circuit”.^[2][19][14] The proverb mentira tem perna curta “a lie has short legs” means that lies are soon found out.^[1]

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 j Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. curto
3. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. curto
4. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. curtus
5. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. court
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2421
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. curtus
8. ^ Williams, Edwin B. (1938), From Latin to Portuguese: Historical Phonology and Morphology of the Portuguese Language, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, p. § 38.1
9. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 146
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. ^ 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. curto
12. ^ 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. curto
13. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 506
14. ^ a b c d 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. curto
15. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1952), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 2: Nomes próprios, Rio de Janeiro, p. s.v. curto
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. curto
17. ^ 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, 676
18. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. curto
19. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. curto