falecer

Forms

falecer (first-person singular present faleço, first-person singular preterite faleci, past participle falecido)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese had falecer and falescer.^[2][1] Bluteau (1712–1728) and Wiktionary also give the spelling fallecer.^[3][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *fallescō, an inchoative verb built on Latin fallō (“to deceive; to fail”), written Old Galician-Portuguese falecer and Old Galician-Portuguese falescer in the oldest texts.^[4][5][6][1] Houaiss, Cunha and Nascentes cite the reconstructed infinitive *fallescere.^[4][5][6] Wiktionary instead derives it from the older verb falir, from *falliō, the Latin verb moved to the fourth conjugation.^[1]

The same formation is Galician falecer and Spanish fallecer.^[1] The Spanish verb is recorded from the poem of the Cid on and was common in the Middle Ages in the same senses as fallir “to be lacking, to fail, to sin”.^[7]

The Latin verb is traced by de Vaan to a Proto-Indo-European root “to stumble”, with cognates in Sanskrit, Greek and Armenian.^[8] Wiktionary writes it Proto-Indo-European *(s)gʷʰh₂el- (“to stumble”), with the shift from “stumble” to “deceive”.^[8][1] De Vaan notes that the correspondence is irregular and needs a voiceless aspirate.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the cantigas the verb means “to be lacking, to fail”: King Dinis wishes que gram coita nom mi falecesse “that great sorrow should not fail me”, and in the Cantigas de Santa Maria the Virgin non quis falecer a seu chamado, did not fail his call.^[9][10] The same texts use it for “to sin, to go wrong” and “to lose strength”.^[10][2]

Semantic evolution

Nascentes explains the sense “to die” as growing out of “to be lacking” through phrases such as falecer por morte in the Crónica do Infante Santo: whoever dies is missing from his family and friends.^[6] The two senses stood side by side for centuries: Cardoso (1569) and Pereira (1697) translate the verb as “to be lacking”, Barbosa (1611) as “to die”.^[11][12][13] Nascentes calls “to be lacking” the old sense and “to die” the modern one.^[14]

Today “to die” is the main sense, and the Portuguese Wiktionary notes that the verb is often a euphemism for morrer.^[4][15] Houaiss labels “to be scarce, to be lacking” as old, though the dictionaries still record it in literary use, as in falece-lhe experiência.^[4][16]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, in the cantigas, meaning “to be lacking, to fail”.^[4][5][10]
• c. 1430 – the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437) uses the verb.^[17]
• 15th century – first record of falecimento.^[5]
• 1569 – Cardoso translates falecer as “to be lacking”.^[11]
• 1611 – Barbosa glosses it “to die”.^[13]
• 1697 – Pereira still gives “to be lacking”.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To die, to pass away: O poeta faleceu aos noventa anos.^[4][16][1]
2. (intransitive) To cease to exist; to be absent: Nesta encosta falecem as árvores.^[4][16]
3. (old, literary) To be scarce or lacking; to fall short: Falecem-lhe as forças.^[4][16][18]
4. (literary) falecer de: to lack, to be in need of.^[16][19]

Word family

• falecido
• falecimento
• desfalecer
• desfalecimento

Related words

• falir
• falhar
• falta
• Galician falecer
• Spanish fallecer

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b 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. falecer
3. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. falecer
4. ^ 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. falecer
5. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. falecer
6. ^ a b c Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. falecer
7. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 845
8. ^ 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
9. ^ Lopes, Graça Videira; Ferreira, Manuel Pedro et al. (2011–), Cantigas Medievais Galego-Portuguesas [online database], Lisboa: Instituto de Estudos Medievais, FCSH/NOVA, https://cantigas.fcsh.unl.pt, p. s.v. falecer
10. ^ a b c 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. falecer
11. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. falecer
12. ^ 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. falecer
13. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. falecer
14. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. s.v. falecer
15. ^ Wikcionário (Portuguese Wiktionary), pt.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. falecer
16. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. falecer
17. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. falecer
18. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. falecer
19. ^ 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. falecer