escusar

Forms

escusar (first-person singular present escuso, first-person singular preterite escusei, past participle escusado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin excūsō (“to excuse, plead as an excuse”), written Old Galician-Portuguese escusar in the oldest texts.^[1][2][3] Nascentes takes it as a learned word.^[4] The Latin verb is formed from ex- (“out of”) and causa (“cause; lawsuit”).^[5][1][2] Lewis and Short explain it as “to release from a charge”.^[6]

The same Latin verb is Galician escusar, Spanish excusar, Catalan excusar, Italian scusare and French excuser.^[1] In French it was borrowed from Latin about 1120, first as Old French escuser.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the verb to the 13th century, Cunha with the sense “to excuse, pardon, tolerate”.^[2][3] In the cantigas d'amigo it means “to dispense with”, and in another cantiga a speaker complains nen vós nunca me escusastes / de servir per mia pessõa “nor did you ever let me off serving in person”.^[8][9] The Crónica Troiana has it for “to excuse oneself”, “to clear of blame” and “to avoid”: o que a de seer nõ se pode escusar “what must be cannot be avoided”.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The medieval senses, “to excuse”, “to exempt” and “to avoid”, are still those of the modern verb.^[8][2] The noun escusa “excuse” is recorded from the 14th century, the adjective escusado “needless” from the 16th.^[3] Morais (1813) puts first the sense “not to need something”, then “to spare, avoid” and “to excuse oneself”.^[10] Figueiredo (1899) adds the intransitive use “not to be necessary”.^[11]

In Portugal the verb also means “to free a room” in one regional survey, and “to do without” in another.^[12]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, in the cantigas.^[2][3][8]
• 14th century – the noun escusa.^[3]
• c. 1430 – the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437) uses the verb.^[13]
• 16th century – first record of escusado.^[3]
• 1697 – Pereira renders it by Latin excuso and purgo.^[14]
• 1813 – Morais lists “not to need”, “to spare” and “to excuse oneself”.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. To forgive or excuse a fault or a person; to tolerate.^[2][15][1]
2. (pronominal) To apologize; to offer excuses.^[2][1]
3. To serve as an excuse for; to justify.^[2][1]
4. To do without; to dispense with: escusou o discurso de abertura.^[2][16]
5. (intransitive) Not to be necessary.^[2][17]
6. To exempt someone from a duty.^[2][18]
7. To avoid or spare: escusar um aborrecimento.^[15][16]
8. (pronominal) To excuse oneself from doing something; to refuse.^[2][17]

Word family

• escusa
• escusado

Related words

• inescusável
• acusar
• causa
• Latin excūsō
• Spanish excusar

Usage notes

In European Portuguese escusar de with an infinitive says that something need not be done, often because it is obvious.^[18][17]

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. escusar
3. ^ a b c d e f Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. escusar
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. escusar
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. excūsō
6. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. excuso
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. excuser
8. ^ a b c d 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. escusar
9. ^ Universo Cantigas: Glosario da poesía medieval profana galego-portuguesa, A Coruña: Instituto da Lingua e Literatura (ILLA), Universidade da Coruña, https://www.universocantigas.gal, p. s.v. escusar
10. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 746
11. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 543
12. ^ 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. escusar
13. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. escusar
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. escusar
15. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. escusar
16. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. escusar
17. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 3819
18. ^ 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. escusar