doze

Forms

doze m or f^[1] A Galician-Portuguese text of 1274 writes duze.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *dodece, a contraction of Latin duodecim (“twelve”).^[3][4][1] It is written Old Galician-Portuguese doze in the oldest texts and once Old Galician-Portuguese duze.^[2]

The same Latin word is Galician doce, Spanish doce, Catalan dotze, French douze and Italian dodici.^[5][1] The older form in Spanish was dodze.^[6][7]

The Latin numeral is a compound of duo (“two”) and decem (“ten”).^[8][1]

Nascentes reconstructs the development: the /u/ of the Latin word was absorbed, a syncopated form with /dz/ followed, as in Spanish, and the cluster was simplified.^[6] The /z/ then closed the syllable with the /o/, so the final -e should have dropped, as it did in Old Spanish doz;^[6][9] Portuguese kept it by analogy with onze, quatorze and quinze.^[6][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the word to 1255, from Cunha's index of medieval Portuguese.^[10] Lorenzo's chronology adds duze in 1274, and the Cantigas de Santa Maria have aos doz’ anos “at twelve years old”, with the final vowel elided.^[2] The Crónica Troiana speaks of doze pedras preçiosas “twelve precious stones” set in a crown.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The numeral has kept its meaning; it is also used as an ordinal, “twelfth”.^[10][4] Morais (1813) records the proverbial outra vez a doze, said of someone who keeps harping on a tiresome subject.^[11] In Portugal um doze is also a mark of twelve points.^[12] Brazilian Portuguese has the popular phrase cortar um doze “to have a hard time, struggle”, and colloquially uses a doze, short for calibre 12, for a 12-gauge shotgun.^[4][13][1]

Cunha lists dozeno from the 14th century beside the learned duodécimo, which is from Latin.^[3]

Timeline

• 1255 – Houaiss's first date.^[10]
• 1274 – the form duze.^[2]
• 13th century – aos doz’ anos in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[2]
• 1380–1425 – the Compostela fragment of the Flos Sanctorum uses the word.^[14]
• 14th century – first record of dozeno.^[3]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses it with Latin duodecim.^[15]
• 1813 – Morais records the phrase outra vez a doze.^[11]

Meanings

Numeral

1. twelve; ten plus two (12, XII).^[10][4][1]
2. twelfth, in a series: o capítulo doze.^[10][4]

Noun

1. The number twelve, or the figure that writes it.^[4][12][1]
2. The person or thing in twelfth place in a series.^[4][16]
3. (Portugal) A school mark of twelve points.^[12]
4. (Brazil, colloquial, feminine) A 12-gauge shotgun.^[1]

Word family

• dozeno

Related words

• duodécimo
• dúzia
• Latin duodecim
• Spanish doce

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 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. doze
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. doze
4. ^ a b c d e f g Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. doze
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2799
6. ^ a b c d Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 164
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. duodecim
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. duodecim
9. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. doze
10. ^ a b c d e Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. doze
11. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 641
12. ^ 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. doze
13. ^ 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. doze
14. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. doze
15. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. doze
16. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. doze