enorme

Forms

enorme m or f (plural enormes)^[1] Houaiss records the 15th-century spellings jnnorme and ynorme.^[2] A private letter of 1602 has inormes, and Feijó (1734) still warns against inórme.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin ēnōrmis (“irregular, out of the rule or pattern”), formed from ex- and norma (“carpenter's square; rule, pattern”).^[2][1][5][6] Houaiss dates it to the 15th century from Cunha's slips of medieval Portuguese.^[2] In classical Latin the adjective meant “having no regular shape, irregular, ill-fitting”, and in Medieval Latin also “wicked, heinous”.^[5][7]

The same Latin word was taken into Galician enorme, Spanish enorme, Catalan enorme, French énorme and Italian enorme.^[1][8] Spanish has it from 1438, French from 1340, where the sense “of great size” is recorded from 1547.^[9][10]

Wiktionary suggests that the Latin noun came, perhaps through Etruscan, from Ancient Greek γνώμων (gnṓmōn, “carpenter's square”), from the root Proto-Indo-European *ǵneh₃- (“to know”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss's first sense is “outside the norm or measure; of great size, out of proportion”, and he dates the word to the 15th century.^[2] In a private letter of 1602 it is written inormes.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau (1712–1728) gives three uses: “disproportionately large”, “very ugly”, and, of a crime or sin, “atrocious”, quoting an ode of Camões on a culpa enorme.^[11] Morais (1813) begins with “without rule, irregular, ill-proportioned” and records the legal lesão enorme, the loss suffered by one who sells a thing for less than half its value.^[12] Vieira describes the move from the moral sense to the physical one, “extraordinary in bulk or size”.^[13]

Today the sense of size is the main one, beside “very serious” and “extraordinary”.^[2][14]

Timeline

• 15th century – first records, spelt jnnorme and ynorme.^[2]
• 1602 – inormes in a private letter.^[3]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau defines it as “disproportionately large” and “very ugly”.^[11]
• 1734 – Feijó prescribes enorme, not inórme.^[4]
• 1813 – Morais records the legal lesão enorme.^[12]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira traces the physical sense back to the moral one.^[13]

Meanings

Adjective

1. enormous, huge; beyond the normal measure: Construíram uma ponte enorme sobre o rio.^[2][15][1]
2. (figurative) Excessive; of great weight or importance.^[2][16]
3. (figurative) Very serious, atrocious (atroz) (of a fault or crime).^[2][15][14]
4. (figurative) Out of the ordinary; extraordinary (extraordinário).^[2][17]

Related words

• norma
• Spanish enorme

Usage notes

The original Caldas Aulete also records a nautical noun, the round opening in the after deck through which the head of the rudder passes, and a sense “simple, harmless, simple-minded” in Penafiel.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. enorme
3. ^ a b c 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. enorme
4. ^ a b Feijó, João de Morais Madureira (1734), Orthographia, ou Arte de escrever, e pronunciar com acerto a lingua portugueza, Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. enorme
5. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. ēnormis
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. enorme
7. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. enormis
8. ^ Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. enorme
9. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. norma
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. énorme
11. ^ 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. enorme
12. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 703
13. ^ a b Vieira, Frei Domingos (1871–1874), Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da lingua portugueza, 5 vols., Porto: Ernesto Chardron e Bartholomeu H. de Moraes, p. 3, 156
14. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. enorme
15. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. enorme
16. ^ 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. enorme
17. ^ 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. enorme