em

Forms

The older spelling was en: a notarial register of Noia from 1332 to 1342 has en more than five times as often as em.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin in (“in, into”), written Old Galician-Portuguese en in the oldest texts.^[3][4][5][1] The Latin preposition took the ablative for place and the accusative for direction; when the case endings were lost, the Portuguese word took on a great many relations in Romance.^[3]

The same Latin word is Spanish en, Catalan en, French en and Italian in.^[6][7]

The Latin word comes from the earlier form en, Proto-Italic *en and Proto-Indo-European *h₁én (“in”), cognate with the English word in and with Ancient Greek ἐν (en).^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss's first date, 1152, is a Latin charter of Machado's collection with the Romance spelling en;^[9] em appears in the 13th century.^[3] Cunha also dates the word to the 13th century.^[4] The Noia register of 1332 already uses it for place: a casa em que mora o dito Fernã Eanes “the house in which the said Fernão Eanes lives”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Pereira (1697) glosses it with Latin in.^[9] Bluteau (1712–1728) describes it as the preposition of place and gives both em a prisão and the contracted na prisão.^[10] Morais (1813) extends it from the place where one is to figurative states and to distribution.^[11] Figueiredo (1899) lists place, manner, time, cause, state, purpose and division.^[12] Modern usage adds many adverbial phrases (em silêncio, de vez em quando) and the old construction with the gerund (em chegando, “as soon as he arrives”).^[3]

Timeline

• 1152 – a Latin charter writes the Romance form en.^[3]
• 13th century – the spelling em.^[3]
• 1332 – em and en side by side in a notarial register of Noia.^[2]
• c. 1400 – em in the Santiago fragment of the Flos Sanctorum, its first text in the CTA corpus.^[13]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau calls it the preposition of place.^[10]

Meanings

Preposition

1. in, at, on: marks the place where something is: Ficou em casa., O livro está na mesa.^[3][1]
2. In, within, during (a time): Fizeram tudo em duas horas.^[3][1]
3. Marks a state or manner: Vivem em harmonia..^[3]
4. Into (a form or division): Partiu o bolo em oito fatias.^[3]
5. In (a language or medium): Respondeu em francês.^[3]
6. Marks purpose: em sinal de protesto.^[3]
7. Marks value or estimate: A casa foi avaliada em meio milhão.^[3]
8. Links a verb, adjective or noun to its complement: pensar em alguém, acreditar em fantasmas.^[3]
9. With a gerund, marks time or condition: em chegando a primavera.^[3]

Related words

• Latin in
• Spanish en

Usage notes

Williams treats its contractions with the definite article and with the demonstratives in § 137 and § 140.^[14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. em
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. em
4. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. em
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. em
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 169
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b 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. em
10. ^ 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. em
11. ^ Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 653
12. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 477
13. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. em
14. ^ Williams, Edwin B. (1938), From Latin to Portuguese: Historical Phonology and Morphology of the Portuguese Language, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, p. § 137