duro

Forms

duro (feminine dura, masculine plural duros, feminine plural duras, comparable, comparative mais duro, superlative o mais duro or duríssimo)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin dūrus (“hard, firm, solid; harsh, cruel”), written Old Galician-Portuguese duro in the oldest texts.^[2][3][4][1]

The same Latin word is Galician duro, Spanish duro, Catalan dur, French dur, Italian duro and Romanian dur.^[5][1]

De Vaan traces the Latin adjective to Proto-Italic *dūros and Proto-Indo-European *duh₂-ró-s (“far, long”), the source also of Ancient Greek δηρός (dērós, “long”) and Sanskrit दूर (dūrá, “far, distant”).^[6][1] The link needs a change of meaning between “long, lasting” and “hard”, which Wiktionary calls a difficulty; de Vaan notes that the verb dūrō went from “to be hard” to “to endure, last”.^[1][6] The OLD prefers a different pre-form, with the consonant group /dr/.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lorenzo's chronology finds the word in the Cantigas de Santa Maria of the second half of the 13th century, where it already has its physical and its figurative sense: as pedras duras “the hard stones”, a prison tan dura “so harsh”, and a body gone stiff come madeiro duro “like hard wood”.^[8] Houaiss and Cunha both date the word to the 13th century.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The Crónica Troiana uses the adjective for hard stone and for a fight that was harsh and without pity, so the senses “solid” and “cruel, severe” were both there from the start, as in Latin.^[8][2] Bluteau in 1712 gives “not soft, firm, solid” and also “difficult”, and the later dictionaries add the ideas of arduous, unpleasant to the ear and rigorous;^[9][10] Figueiredo in 1899 also records an informal sense “of mature age”.^[9][10]

Brazilian Portuguese gave the word informal senses of its own: “penniless, broke”, “still strong and vigorous” in an old person, and “tough, aggressive” in a game or a fighter.^[2] As an adverb it means “hard, without rest” (trabalhar duro) and “harshly”.^[2]

Timeline

• 13th century, second half – the Cantigas de Santa Maria have as pedras duras and madeiro duro.^[8]
• c. 1430 – the word in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[11]
• 1576 – a private letter has duro.^[12]
• 1712 – Bluteau defines duro as “not soft, not tender, firm, solid” and as “difficult”.^[9]
• 1789 – Morais enters a noun duro, the name of an intoxicating Indian herb.^[13]
• 1899 – Figueiredo lists the Spanish silver coin duro under the same head.^[10]

Meanings

Adjective

1. hard, solid: resistant to wear, pressure and penetration.^[2][14][1]
2. Hard to bear; arduous, toilsome: um inverno duro.^[2][14][1]
3. Stiff, not soft or flexible; uncomfortable, as a mattress or a spring; stiff to move, as a door or a hinge.^[2]
4. Unfeeling, callous; slow to understand or to be moved.^[2][15]
5. Severe, harsh, merciless; firm and authoritarian in character.^[2][14][1]
6. Stale (of food): pão duro.^[2]
7. (music) Harsh to the ear, dissonant.^[2][14]
8. (Brazil, informal) broke, penniless.^[2][1]
9. (Brazil, informal) Still strong and vigorous; tough, ready to fight.^[2]

Adverb

1. Hard, without rest; harshly, without pity.^[2]

Noun

1. (Portugal) A tough guy, a man who fears nothing.^[2][16]

Word family

• duramente
• durão

Related words

• durar
• dureza
• endurecer
• Latin dūrus
• Spanish duro

Usage notes

Houaiss, Aurélio and the DLP also record a masculine noun duro, a silver Spanish coin worth five pesetas, from Spanish duro, short for peso duro, of the same Latin origin.^{[2][14][16][4]} Morais (1789) also enters a noun duro, an Indian herb that intoxicates for a long time, citing Rui Freire.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. duro
3. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. duro
4. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. duro
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2808
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. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ 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. duro
9. ^ 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. duro
10. ^ a b c Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 467
11. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. duro
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. duro
13. ^ a b 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, 459
14. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. duro
15. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. duro
16. ^ 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. duro