doer

Forms

doer (third-person only, third-person singular present dói, third-person singular preterite doeu, past participle doído)^[1] Medieval texts write doer and dolver (13th century) and dooer (14th century).^[2] The cantigas d'amor have the old present dol “it hurts”.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin doleō (“to be in pain, to hurt”), recorded as Old Galician-Portuguese doer in the 13th century.^[2][4][1] Beside Galician doer, which agrees with it, the other Romance languages keep the Latin /l/: Spanish doler, Catalan doldre, Occitan doler, Italian dolere and Romanian durea, and Old French had doloir.^[5][1] Portuguese lost the /l/ between vowels, while the 13th-century present Old Galician-Portuguese dol kept it at the end of the word.^[5][3]

The Latin verb goes back to *doleō and Proto-Indo-European *dolh₁éyeti (“to split”), a causative of *delh₁- (“to cut, chop”).^[6][1] De Vaan explains the meaning from the feeling of being torn apart, and notes that the sufferer was first expressed in the dative, as Old Latin still shows.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the verb to the 13th century, Houaiss from Cunha's index of medieval Portuguese.^[2][4] In the cantigas it is used both intransitively, “to hurt”, and reflexively with de, “to feel pity for, to grieve over”.^[7] The Crónica Troiana has both: a wound that lle non doeu nen ponto “did not hurt him at all”, and the people who begged King Priam que se doese deles “to take pity on them”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau (1712) gives the verb as “to cause or feel pain”, with doe-me a cabeça “my head aches”, the construction of today, in which the aching part is the subject and the sufferer an indirect object.^[8] For that reason the verb is used almost only in the third person in this sense.^[9][1] The reflexive doer-se moved from “to pity” to “to regret” and “to take offence”.^[2][10] The Portuguese present dói passed into Macanese as dôi or dói.^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, as doer and dolver.^[2][4]
• 14th century – the spelling dooer.^[2]
• c. 1430 – the verb in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[11]
• 1504 – dohya in a private letter.^[12]
• 1697 – Pereira renders Doer by Latin doleo.^[13]
• 1712 – Bluteau gives doe-me a cabeça.^[8]
• 1789 – Morais gives the reflexive doer-se “to feel compassion”.^[14]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To hurt, to ache, to be painful: dói-me o joelho.^[2][9][1]
2. (transitive or intransitive) To cause physical or emotional pain; to grieve: doeu-lhe a ingratidão do filho.^[2][15][1]
3. (figurative, informal) To be a great sacrifice or expense.^[15][9]
4. (reflexive) To feel pity for, to sympathise with (doer-se de).^[2][16]
5. (reflexive) To take offence, to feel hurt.^[2][10]
6. (reflexive) To regret, to repent.^[2][16]

Related words

• adoecer
• doente
• dolorido
• doloroso
• dor
• dorido
• indolor
• Latin doleō
• Galician doer
• Spanish doler

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 k Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. doer
3. ^ 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. doer
4. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. doer
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ 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
7. ^ 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. doer
8. ^ 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. doer
9. ^ a b c 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. doer
10. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 3253
11. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. doer
12. ^ 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. doer
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. doer
14. ^ 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, 452
15. ^ a b 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. doer
16. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. doer