espinho

Forms

espinho m (plural espinhos)^[1] The oldest spelling is espino, of the 14th century;^[2][3] espinho appears in the 15th.^[2][3]

Etymology

According to Houaiss, Cunha and Wiktionary it is inherited from Latin spīnus (“thorn bush”), written Old Galician-Portuguese espino in the 14th century and Old Galician-Portuguese espinho from the 15th.^[2][3][1] The Latin noun was feminine and named the shrub, perhaps the blackthorn;^[4][5][2] Houaiss and Cunha give it as a fourth-declension noun, and the OLD records both declensions.^[4][5][2] Nascentes's fuller dictionary instead takes the word as a masculine formed in Portuguese beside espinha, as in pairs such as caneca and caneco, and the Porto dictionary also takes it from that noun.^[6][7] Figueiredo said only that it has the same origin as that noun.^[8]

The same Latin word is Spanish espino, Galician espino and Catalan espí, all names of thorny shrubs.^[9] The DLE, however, derives the Spanish word from espina.^[10]

The Latin noun is formed from spīna (“thorn, prickle”).^[1][4] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *speinā- and Proto-Indo-European *spein-, with cognates in Latvian and Old High German, and thinks it may share its base with spīca (“ear of grain”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the first record, spelt espino, to the 14th century, from the slips of the index of medieval Portuguese.^[2] Cunha dates espino to the 14th century and espinho to the 15th.^[3] A private letter of 1570 in the Post Scriptum corpus already has the plural espinhos.^[12]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau (1712–1728) defines the word as the sharp point of the bramble or the rose, calls orange and lemon trees arvores de espinho and lists coroa de espinhos “crown of thorns”.^[13] Morais (1789) describes it as a point growing on trunks and branches.^[14] The original Caldas Aulete records the proverb quem abrolhos semeia, espinhos colhe “who sows caltrops reaps thorns”.^[15]

Botany later restricted the term to a hard point that grows from the wood and cannot be pulled off without tearing the tissue, leaving the prickle of the rose to acúleo, though popular usage still calls both espinho.^[2][15][16] The figurative sense “difficulty, trouble” is in Silva Bastos and Figueiredo.^[17][8] In southern Brazil the word also names a pointed knife.^[2][18]

Timeline

• 1300s – first records, spelt espino.^[2][3]
• 1400s – the spelling espinho.^[3]
• 1570 – espinhos in a private letter.^[12]
• 1697 – Pereira gives Latin sentis and vepres.^[19]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau lists arvores de espinho and coroa de espinhos.^[13]
• 1789 – Morais defines the thorn of trees.^[14]
• 1899 – Figueiredo adds the stiff bristles of some animals and the figurative “difficulty”.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. (botany) A thorn: a hard, sharp organ formed from a modified branch, leaf, stipule or root and deeply inserted in the plant, unlike an acúleo.^[2][16][1]
2. Any sharp point on a plant, including a prickle: Piquei o dedo num espinho da roseira.^[15][20][1]
3. (zoology) A spine of a sea urchin; a stiff quill of a hedgehog or porcupine.^[2][21]
4. (anatomy) A bony plate on the back or front of a vértebra.^[2]
5. Any thin, pointed object; a splinter that gets into the flesh.^[2][20]
6. (figurative) A difficulty or trouble; a worry or grief.^[2][16][20]
7. (southern Brazil) A pointed knife.^[2][18]
8. A Brazilian tree of the buckthorn family, Cormonema spinosum, with a thorny bark.^[2]

Word family

• porco-espinho
• espinho-de-cristo
• espinho-de-maricá
• espinhozinho

Related words

• espinal
• espinel
• espinha
• espinhaço
• espinhal
• espinhar
• espinheiral
• espinheiro
• espinhel
• espinhela
• espinhoso
• Latin spīna
• Spanish espino

Usage notes

Aurélio also records espinho as the name of an Indigenous people who lived on the Curumaá, a tributary of the Purus in Acre.^[16] Nascentes derives the name of the town of Espinho in the district of Aveiro from the noun, and Wiktionary considers this possible.^[22][1]

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 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. espinho
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. espinha
4. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. spinus
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 191
7. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 3898
8. ^ a b c Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 555
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. spinus
10. ^ Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. espino
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b 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. espinho
13. ^ 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. espinho
14. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1789), Diccionario da lingua portugueza composto pelo padre D. Rafael Bluteau, reformado, e accrescentado, 2 vols., Lisboa: Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, p. 1, 51
15. ^ a b c 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. espinho
16. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. espinho
17. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. espinho
18. ^ a b Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. espinho
19. ^ 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. espinho
20. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. espinho
21. ^ 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. espinho
22. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1952), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 2: Nomes próprios, Rio de Janeiro, p. 136