esse

Forms

esse (feminine essa, masculine plural esses, feminine plural essas)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese had esse, essa and a neuter esso; the invariable isso appears in the cantigas only contracted with de.^[2][3] The spelling êsse, with a circumflex, is an older variant.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin ipse (“himself; the same”), written Old Galician-Portuguese esse in the oldest texts.^[4][5][1] Houaiss explains the double ⟨ss⟩ by regressive assimilation of the /p/ to the following /s/.^[4]

The same Latin word is Galician ese, Spanish ese, Catalan eixe, Occitan eis, Italian esso, Sardinian issu and Romanian îns.^[6][1] The REW notes that Romanian, Italian, Old Occitan and Spanish keep traces of its old sense as a pronoun of identity, “self”.^[6]

The Latin pronoun is a compound of is (“he, that”) with an element -pse.^[7][1] De Vaan takes this element to contain the pronoun Proto-Indo-European *so and reconstructs the compound as Proto-Italic *e(s)peso.^[7] Wiktionary gives the traditional explanation of the /p/ as a consonant inserted between the two inflected parts, while de Vaan allows that it may be an old particle.^[1][7]

From a pronoun of identity the word became in Portuguese the demonstrative of the second person, pointing to what is near the person spoken to.^[8] Corominas notes the same change in the Spanish and Catalan words, probably through its use to avoid repeating a noun already named.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the first records to the 13th century.^[4][5] In the Cancioneiro da Ajuda Johan Garcia de Guilhade writes esse pouco que ei de viver “the little that I have left to live”, and a cantiga d'escarnho of Afonso X has ledo seeredes esse dia “you will be glad that day”.^[3] The word already points to something known to the person addressed or just mentioned, and the Cantigas de Santa Maria use it in time phrases such as essa ora and essa vez.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

In the cantigas en essa ora means “then, at that very moment”, and the neuter esso appears in phrases such as esso pouco “that little”.^[2] The dictionaries of the 17th and 18th centuries translate the word with Latin iste, not ipse: Pereira (1697) glosses Esse, ou essa as Iste, and Folqman (1755) gives Esse, Essa, Isso as Iste, Ista, Istud.^[10][11] Morais (1813) calls it an “articular adjective” that marks a thing as near the person addressed or named by that person.^[12]

Modern dictionaries add its use for a time not long past and for something just mentioned, and in exclamations of surprise or disagreement.^[4][13] In colloquial Brazilian Portuguese it also points to what is near the speaker, the older domain of este.^[1] In Rio Grande do Sul it forms many set phrases, such as esse é dos nossos “he is one of us” and esse é outro cantar “that is another story”.^[14]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records of the demonstrative, in the cantigas.^[4][5][3]
• 13th century, second half – the Cantigas de Santa Maria have esse, essa, esses and the neuter esso.^[3]
• c. 1400 – a fragment of the Flos Sanctorum (witness 1380–1425) is the first CTA text with the word.^[15]
• 1697 – Pereira glosses Esse, ou essa with Latin Iste.^[10]
• 1755 – Folqman lists Esse, Essa, Isso.^[11]
• 1813 – Morais describes it as an “articular adjective”.^[12]
• 1899 – Figueiredo defines it as the pronoun for a person or thing near the speaker or the person addressed, from Latin ipse.^[16]

Meanings

Determiner

1. that: points to a person or thing near the person addressed, or connected with them: Onde compraste esse casaco?^[4][17][1]
2. That: refers to something just mentioned, or to a time not long past: Nesse inverno nevou muito.^[4][13]
3. Of the place where the person addressed is or lives: Como está o tempo nessa terra?^[17]
4. (Brazil, colloquial) this, of something near the speaker.^[1]
5. In exclamations, marks something unexpected or untimely.^[13]

Pronoun

1. That, that one: a person or thing near the person addressed, or already mentioned: Esse é o meu primo.^[1][18]
2. Of things named in turn, the one named second to last.^[18]

Related words

• este
• isto
• isso
• aquele
• Latin ipse
• Spanish ese

Usage notes

The feminine is essa, the plurals esses and essas, and the neuter isso.^[1] A separate noun esse, with open /ɛ/, is the name of the letter s (plural esses), and also anything in the shape of an S, such as a biscuit or, in Amazonia, a hook for hanging a hammock;^[4][19][17] Nascentes derives it from the spelling name the Romans gave the letter, and andar aos esses is to zigzag from drunkenness.^[4][19][17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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. esse
3. ^ a b c d e 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. esse
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. esse
5. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. esse
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4541
7. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. ipse
8. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 194
9. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 722
10. ^ a b 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. esse
11. ^ a b Folqman, Carlos (1755), Diccionario portuguez, e latino, Lisboa: Régia Officina Silviana (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. esse
12. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 768
13. ^ a b c 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. esse
14. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. esse
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. esse
16. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. esse
17. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. esse
18. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. esse
19. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. esse