feder

Forms

feder (first-person singular present fedo, first-person singular preterite fedi, past participle fedido)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin foeteō (“to stink”), written Old Galician-Portuguese feder in the oldest texts.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin verb was also spelt with ⟨faet-⟩ and ⟨fēt-⟩, and Silva Bastos and Wiktionary cite it in the spelling with ⟨fēt-⟩.^[5][6][1]

The same Latin verb survives in Spanish heder (Old Spanish feder in Berceo), Galician feder and Asturian feder, in the Bearnese form hede, in Dalmatian fit and in southern Italian dialects such as Sicilian fetiri.^[7][8][9] Corominas notes that most Romance languages preferred the more common Latin puteō instead.^[7]

The OLD suggests a link with fimum (“dung”) and suffiō (“to fumigate”).^[10] De Vaan reconstructs the verb as *dʰwoh₂-i- (“to smoke”) and compares Old Irish dé (“smoke”) and Hittite tuḫḫuwai- (“smoke”), with the meaning going from “smoky” to “smelly”.^[5] Wiktionary traces it, with a question mark, to Proto-Indo-European *dʰewh₂-.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lapa's glossary of the satirical cantigas (cantigas d'escarnho) has the verb in a poem by Afonso Sanchez: un ome que fede a bode “a man who stinks of billy goat”.^[11] Cunha dates the first record to the 14th century and Houaiss to the 15th; both give the sense “to give off a bad smell”.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

Cunha records the figurative sense “to annoy, weary” alongside the literal one, and he dates the derivatives fedor and fedorento to the 14th century, fedegoso to the 15th, fedelho to the 18th and fedentina to 1881.^[3] The 16th- and 17th-century dictionaries translate the verb with Latin foeteo and puteo, and Bluteau (1712–1728) adds feder o vinho “to smell of wine”.^[12][13][14]

The grammarians long treated it as a defective verb: Feijó (1734) says nobody says eu fedo and that one says “I give off a bad smell” instead, and Morais (1813) calls feda and fedo forms of the common people.^[15][16] In modern use the verb also means “to become unpleasant, get complicated” and “to have the look of”, and the phrase não feder nem cheirar “neither stink nor smell” describes someone or something without any character.^[17][18]

Timeline

• 14th century – first record, according to Cunha.^[3]
• 14th century – the derivatives fedor and fedorento are recorded.^[3]
• 1569 – Cardoso's dictionary has Feder.^[12]
• 1629 – the form fedeu appears in a private letter.^[19]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau defines it as giving off a corrupt smell that offends the nose and the brain.^[14]
• 1734 – Feijó describes it as a verb without a first person.^[15]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira still labels it defective.^[20]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To stink, give off a bad smell; with a, to reek of something: O lixo fedia ao sol. A roupa dele fede a tabaco.^[2][18][1]
2. (transitive with indirect object, figurative) To annoy or weary someone: Já lhe fedem tantas reclamações.^[2][21][22]
3. (informal) To turn unpleasant, to get complicated: Isto vai acabar por feder.^[18][17]
4. (with a) To have the look or signs of something: O acordo fede a fraude.^[18][17]

Word family

• fedor
• fedorento
• fedegoso
• fedelho
• fedentina

Related words

• fétido
• fetidez
• Latin foeteō
• Spanish heder

Usage notes

In the present indicative the stem vowel is open where the ending begins with e (fedes, fede, fedem) and closed where it begins with o or a (fedo, feda); Aurélio gives the full conjugation, while Michaelis says the forms ending in -o and -a are not used.^[18][23] In Brazil não feder nem cheirar is said of an insignificant person.^[24]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. feder
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. feder
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. feder
5. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. feder
7. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 338
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ 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. feder
12. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. feder
13. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. feder
14. ^ 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. feder
15. ^ a b Feijó, João de Morais Madureira (1734), Orthographia, ou Arte de escrever, e pronunciar com acerto a lingua portugueza, Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. feder
16. ^ Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 9
17. ^ 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. feder
18. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. feder
19. ^ 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. feder
20. ^ 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, 620
21. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. feder
22. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 4224
23. ^ 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. feder
24. ^ 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. feder