de

Forms

Before a vowel it is often elided to d’ in writing, and it fuses with the definite article into do, da, dos, das.^[1][2] Houaiss also records an old variant di in the 13th century.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin dē (“from, down from”), written Old Galician-Portuguese de in the oldest texts.^[3][4][1] In Latin the preposition took the ablative and meant movement away from a point, “from above”; in the spoken language it came to express the relations of the genitive, and when the case endings were lost it took over the function of marking possession and dependence.^[3][4][5]

The same Latin word is Galician de, Spanish de, Catalan de, French de, Italian di and Romanian de.^[5][6][1]

Wiktionary traces the Latin word to Proto-Italic *dē (“from”) and Proto-Indo-European *déh₁ (“towards”), formed from *de (“to, towards”) with the instrumental suffix *-h₁, and compares Ancient Greek δέ (dé) and the English word to.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss's first date, 850–866, comes from a Latin charter in Machado's collection.^[3] In the Galician-Portuguese lyric of the 13th century the word already has its main functions: it marks possession and property, distance and separation, the subject of talk (“about”), origin (“on the part of”), the second term of a comparison, a partitive noun and the agent of a passive verb, and it links a verb to an infinitive.^[7] Michaëlis noted that the old language has examples of all the modern uses and of some that have since been abandoned.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Old Galician-Portuguese used de after many verbs, such as atender, convir and cuidar, and in the cantigas it could also mean “with” or “because of” (de vós “on your account”).^[7] Bluteau (1712–1728) describes it as the ordinary sign of the genitive.^[8] Morais's dictionary of 1813 lists the senses of starting point, possession, matter, manner, instrument, cause and time (de pequenino “since childhood”) that the modern dictionaries still give.^[9] Aurélio calls it a particle of very wide use, found in a great many fixed phrases of position, state and manner (de pé, de costas, de férias).^[10][2]

As an element of compounds, de- is also a prefix of origin, removal or reversal, mostly in words taken from Latin.^[10][11]

Timeline

• 850–866 – a Latin charter has the Romance preposition.^[3]
• 13th century – de and the variant di in Galician-Portuguese texts.^[3]
• c. 1350 – de in the Trasladação de S. Nicolau, the earliest text of the CTA corpus to use it.^[12]
• 1697 – Pereira's Thesouro glosses it with Latin a, ab.^[13]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau calls it the usual sign of the genitive.^[8]
• 1813 – Morais lists its senses of origin, possession, matter, manner, instrument and cause.^[9]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira's dictionary quotes it from the Rule of St Benedict and Fernão Lopes.^[14]

Meanings

Preposition

1. from: marks the origin or starting point of a movement: Ela chegou de Lisboa ontem.^[3][15][1]
2. Marks the place from which an action is done: Viu o mar da varanda.^[3][15]
3. of; -'s: marks the possessor, the author or the whole of which something is part: o carro do meu irmão, a perna da mesa.^[3][1]
4. about: marks the subject of speech or thought: Falámos de política.^[3][15][1]
5. Marks the material or contents: uma colher de prata, um saco de batatas.^[3][15][1]
6. Marks the cause: Tremia de frio.^[3][16]
7. Marks the means, instrument or manner: Vive do seu trabalho.^[3][16]
8. Marks the time: de noite, de madrugada.^[3][15]
9. Marks purpose, characteristic or measure: sapatos de festa, uma rapariga de olhos verdes, um muro de três metros.^[3][1]
10. Introduces the agent of a passive or of an adjective (querido de todos), and a part of a whole in partitive use.^[3][16]
11. Links a verb to a following infinitive: Deixou de fumar.^[3][10]

Related words

• Latin dē
• Galician de

Usage notes

Bluteau notes that many old Portuguese surnames are formed with de and a place name, the mark of a family named after its estate.^[8] Priberam warns against confusing it with dê, a form of the verb dar.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b 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. de
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. de
4. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. de
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
7. ^ 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. de
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. de
9. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 511
10. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. de
11. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 379
12. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. de
13. ^ 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. de
14. ^ 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, 713
15. ^ a b c d e Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 2680
16. ^ a b c d Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. de