enxugar

Forms

enxugar (first-person singular present enxugo, first-person singular preterite enxuguei, past participle enxugado, short past participle enxuto)^[1] In the 14th and 15th centuries the verb was also written esugar, exugar and ẽxugar.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin exsūcō (“to deprive of juice, to dry”), with the first syllable remade as en-, as in enxame.^[2][3][4][1] Nascentes puts the ⟨n⟩ down to the language's dislike of an isolated initial ⟨e⟩.^[4] The oldest texts also have Old Galician-Portuguese exugar, and García de Diego, after Huber, gives an old form Old Galician-Portuguese eixugar.^[2][5]

The same Latin verb is Galician enxugar, Spanish enjugar, Catalan eixugar, Occitan eissugar, French essuyer, Italian asciugare and Romanian usca.^[6][1] Corominas finds the Spanish verb from about 1250 and calls it a word common to all the Romance languages.^[7]

The Latin word is formed from ex- and sūcus (“juice, moisture”).^[1][8] Cunha instead derives it from sūgō (“to suck”).^[3] Lewis and Short find it in late writers such as Caelius Aurelianus and Cassiodorus.^[8] The adjective enxuto “dry” keeps the old participle, from exsūctus.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cunha and Houaiss date the verb to the 14th century.^[3][2] Lorenzo's chronology quotes the Crónica Troiana, os meus ollos nunca sse enxugaran chorando “my eyes would never have dried from weeping”, and a treatise on horse medicine that washes a wound with strong vinegar and dries it, et exugao.^[11] The participle had come earlier: enxoyto, enxuito and enxouto “dry” are recorded in the 13th century.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

A document of 1377 from São Tiago de Coimbra says of cows that they gave birth there e enxugarom, which Viterbo read as “and were milked”.^[12] Morais thought the word was intransitive there, “stopped giving milk”.^[13]

Cardoso and Barbosa translate the verb with Latin sicco “to dry”.^[14][15] Bluteau has drying something in the air or the sun, drying the hands on a cloth and drying tears, and a falconer's sense: the quills of a hawk's new feathers dry up when they stop growing.^[16] Morais adds the figurative enxugar o pranto and the familiar “to drain a glass by drinking”.^[13]

The 20th century added “to cut what is superfluous”, used of a text, a budget or a company's staff, and in economics “to reduce the money or securities in circulation”.^[2][17] The DLP marks the first of these as Brazilian.^[18] In Rio Grande do Sul the verb is a slang word for “to kill”.^[2][19]

Timeline

• 14th century – first records of enxugar, esugar and exugar.^[3][2]
• 1377 – enxugarom as ditas vacas in a document of São Tiago de Coimbra.^[12]
• 1518 – in the Espelho de Cristina.^[20]
• 1554 – emxugado in a private letter.^[21]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses it with Latin sicco.^[14]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau records the falconers' sense.^[16]
• 1813 – Morais gives “to drain by drinking” as familiar.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. To dry, to take the moisture out of;^[2][17][1] (intransitive and pronominal) to become dry: Deixa a roupa enxugar ao vento.^[2][17][1]
2. To wipe away (tears); enxugar as lágrimas a alguém, to comfort someone.^[2][22]
3. (figurative, informal) To drink to the last drop, to drain: Enxugou a garrafa num instante.^[2][23]
4. (figurative) To trim away what is excessive or superfluous: É preciso enxugar o relatório antes de o publicar.^[2][17][1]
5. (economics) To reduce the amount of money, bonds or securities in circulation.^[2][17]
6. (cooking) Of a dish, to lose its sauce or broth through overcooking.^[2][22]
7. (Rio Grande do Sul, slang) To kill.^[2][19]

Word family

• enxuto
• enxugador
• enxugadouro

Related words

• suco
• Galician enxugar
• Spanish enjugar

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. enxugar
3. ^ a b c d e Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. enxugar
4. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. enxugar
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. exsucare
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3073
7. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 632
8. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. exsūco
9. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. enxuto
10. ^ a b Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. enxuto
11. ^ 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. enxugar
12. ^ a b Viterbo, Joaquim de Santa Rosa de (1798–1799), Elucidario das palavras, termos e frases que em Portugal antiguamente se usárão, 2 vols., Lisboa: Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, p. 2, 38
13. ^ a b c Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 725
14. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. enxugar
15. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. enxugar
16. ^ 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. enxugar
17. ^ a b c d e 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. enxugar
18. ^ 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. enxugar
19. ^ a b Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. enxugar
20. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. enxugar
21. ^ 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. enxugar
22. ^ a b 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. enxugar
23. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. enxugar