estranho

Forms

estranho (feminine estranha, masculine plural estranhos, feminine plural estranhas, comparable, comparative mais estranho, superlative o mais estranho or estranhíssimo, augmentative estranhão)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote estranho, estranno, estrãyo, estrayo, extraneo and extranyo.^[2][3] Michaëlis took estrayo, common in the Graal, for estrãyo with the tilde left out.^[4] The spelling extranho is also found.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin extrāneus (“external, from outside; foreign”), written Old Galician-Portuguese estranho in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1] The Latin adjective is formed from extrā (“outside”) with the suffix -āneus.^[5][1]

The same Latin word is Galician estraño, Spanish extraño, Catalan estrany, Occitan estranh, French étrange and Italian strano.^[6][1] In Spanish the word is inherited, a popular one, Corominas notes, and was spelt with ⟨s⟩ until the end of the 17th century.^[7] estrangeiro has a separate source: it is étranger, a derivative of the French adjective.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the word to the 13th century.^[2][3] In the cantigas it means “foreign, from outside, unknown”: Estevan Faian writes non queren om' estranho sobre si “they will not have a stranger over them”.^[4] Cunha's first sense, and the first sense in the glossary of the Universo Cantigas, is “extraordinary, strange”.^[3][9]

Semantic evolution

For a long time the dictionaries put “foreign” first: Bluteau (1712) defines estranho as one who is away from his homeland, and Morais (1789) begins with “foreigner”, quoting Camões, before the senses “unknown, unfamiliar”, “not related” and “coming from outside”.^[10][11] Vieira also derives it from extra and starts from the sense “from another country”.^[12]

Today the main sense is “odd, out of the ordinary”, and the noun estranho is a person one does not know; the sense “a person of another nation” is little used.^[2][13][1]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, with the forms estranno and estrayo.^[3][2]
• c. 1430 – estranho in the Horto do Esposo.^[14]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses it with Latin extraneus.^[15]
• 1712 – Bluteau defines it as one who is away from his homeland.^[10]
• 1789 – Morais gives “foreigner” as the first sense.^[11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Strange, odd, out of the ordinary; eccentric.^[2][16][1]
2. From outside; foreign, not belonging to a group, family or place.^[2][16]
3. Unknown, unfamiliar; mysterious.^[16][1]
4. Having nothing to do with something; alien to it.^[16][17]
5. Surprising, extraordinary.^[17][18]

Noun

1. A stranger, a person one does not know.^[18][1]
2. A person who does not belong to a family, group or body.^[13][17]

Word family

• estranhar
• estranheza
• estranhamente
• estranhável

Related words

• estrangeiro
• Latin extrāneus
• Galician estraño
• Spanish extraño

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 d e f g Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. estranho
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. estranho
4. ^ a b 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. estranho
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. extrāneus
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3098
7. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 829
8. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. estrangeiro
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. estranho
10. ^ 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. estranho
11. ^ 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, 68
12. ^ 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, 441
13. ^ 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. estranho
14. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. estranho
15. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. estranho
16. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. estranho
17. ^ a b c 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. estranho
18. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 3999