escaravelho

Forms

escaravelho m (plural escaravelhos)^[1] Houaiss records the spelling escravelho in 1562, and Cunha has escravelho beside escaravelho in the 16th century.^[2][3] Wiktionary lists escarabelho as an alternative form.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *scarabiculus (“little beetle”), a diminutive of Latin scarabaeus (“beetle”), in the view of Houaiss, Cunha and the DLP.^[2][3][4][5] Nascentes and Aurélio derive it instead from *scarafaius, a by-form of the Latin word, through an older form Old Galician-Portuguese escaraveo whose ending was replaced.^[6][7] The REW lists the Portuguese word among the descendants of that form.^[8]

The same Latin word is Galician escaravello, Spanish escarabajo, Catalan escarabat, Italian scarafaggio and French escarbot.^[8][2] Corominas finds the form escaravaio in a 13th-century Bible manuscript and explains the modern form as the same change of suffix on a form from the same Vulgar Latin word.^[9][10]

Houaiss traces the Latin word to Ancient Greek σκαράβειος (skarábeios), and names κάραβος (kárabos, “horned beetle; crayfish”) as the closest Greek word, of Mediterranean origin.^[2][11] Beekes considers the Greek word Pre-Greek, and Wiktionary calls the origin of the Latin word unknown: perhaps a foreign word, or the Greek word with a movable s-.^[12][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the word to the 15th century from the slips of Cunha's index of medieval Portuguese, while Cunha's own dictionary first records it, and its variant escravelho, in the 16th century.^[2][3] Barbosa (1611) and Pereira (1697) gloss it with Latin scarabaeus, the dung beetle.^[13][14]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau describes the beetle as a foul-smelling horned insect, counts thirty-two kinds and notes that the priests of ancient Egypt venerated it as an image of the sun.^[15] Morais (1813) and Vieira (1871) add maçã de escaravelho, the ball of dung the beetle rolls with its hind legs.^[16][17] The old Caldas Aulete marks the phrase as familiar for “excrement” and quotes it from D. Francisco Manuel's Feira dos Anexins.^[18]

Figueiredo (1899) and Silva Bastos (1912) already have the sense “an elephant tusk before it is worked”, which modern dictionaries keep.^{[19][20][7][4]} The modern dictionaries also use the word for the carved image of the scarab in stone, and Michaelis connects it with the Egyptian sun god Khepri.^[7][4][5] In northern Portugal the word was also recorded for shield bugs.^[21]

Timeline

• 1400s – first record, in the slips of Cunha's index of medieval Portuguese.^[2]
• 1562 – the spelling escravelho.^[2]
• 1611 – Barbosa glosses escaravelho with Latin scarabeus.^[13]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau describes the beetle and its veneration in Egypt.^[15]
• 1813 – Morais has maçã de escaravelho, the dung ball.^[16]
• 1899 – Figueiredo adds the sense “raw ivory tusk”.^[19]

Meanings

Noun

1. A beetle of the scarab family (Scarabaeidae), especially a dung beetle that feeds on the dung of herbivores and rolls it into balls.^[2][7][4]
2. A carved image of the beetle, usually in a precious or semi-precious stone.^[7][4][22]
3. An elephant tusk before it has been worked; raw ivory (marfim).^[7][4][18]

Word family

• escaravelho-da-batata
• escaravelho-sagrado

Related words

• escarabeu
• rola-bosta
• Latin scarabaeus
• Spanish escarabajo

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. escaravelho
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. escaravelho
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. escaravelho
5. ^ 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. escaravelho
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. escaravelho
7. ^ a b c d e f Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. escaravelho
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7658
9. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 675
10. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. escarabajo
11. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. scarabaeus
12. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. κάραβος
13. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. escaravelho
14. ^ 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. escaravelho
15. ^ 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. escaravelho
16. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 737
17. ^ 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, 255
18. ^ 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. escaravelho
19. ^ a b Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. escaravelho
20. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. escaravelho
21. ^ Instituto da Lingua Galega, Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués (TLPGP), Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/tesouro, p. s.v. escaravelho
22. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 3775