feixe

Forms

feixe m (plural feixes)^[1] Houaiss and Cunha record the 14th-century spelling feyxe.^[2][3] Wiktionary gives feixo as a variant, and a private letter of 1635 already has that form.^[1][4] Dialect surveys in Portugal also record the variants foxe and fecho.^[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin fascis (“bundle, faggot”), written Old Galician-Portuguese feixe and Old Galician-Portuguese feyxe in the medieval texts.^[2][3][1] Nascentes refers the change of the Latin group ⟨sc⟩ to Portuguese ⟨x⟩ to the grammars of Diez and Nunes.^[6]

The same Latin word is Galician feixe, Spanish haz, Catalan feix, Occitan fais, French faix and Italian fascio.^[7][1] García de Diego also lists Asturian fexe.^[8] Corominas explains that the group ⟨sc⟩ made the affricate of the Spanish word voiceless.^[9]

De Vaan reconstructs *faski- (“bundle”) and sees an Italo-Celtic word, cognate with Old Irish basc (“necklace”), for which no Indo-European etymology is available; he rejects the comparison with Greek words for "bundle".^[10] Wiktionary tentatively takes it back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰaskyo- (“bundle”), but notes that the word may not be older than Italo-Celtic.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Cantigas de Santa Maria (cantiga 315) the word names sheaves made of many ears of grain (feixes que estavan / feitos d'espigas muitas).^[11] Another cantiga uses it for a bundle into which everything is gathered (fazed'end'un feixe).^[12] The sense is the concrete "bundle, sheaf" that Latin already had.^[2][13]

Semantic evolution

The dictionaries of the 16th and 17th centuries simply render the word with Latin fasciculus and fascis.^[14][15] Morais (1789) names bundles of rods, of ears and of firewood, the beam of a wine or olive press (feixe do lagar), and the phrase dar algumas coisas todas em feixe "to lump things together", said to show how little difference one sees between them.^[16] Vieira adds the figurative "great quantity" (um feixe de cuidados).^[17]

The modern technical senses grew out of the image of many parallel strands tied together: in anatomy and botany a bundle of fibres or vessels, in physics and optics a beam of particles or of rays of light, and in linguistics a bundle of distinctive features or of isoglosses.^[2][18] Informally, feixe de nervos is a very nervous person and feixe de ossos a very thin one.^[2][19]

Timeline

• 13th century – the Cantigas de Santa Maria speak of feixes made of ears of grain.^[11]
• 14th century – the spellings feixe and feyxe in Cunha's records.^[3]
• c. 1430 – feixe in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[20]
• 1569 – Cardoso's dictionary renders feixe by Latin fasciculus.^[14]
• 1635 – the variant feixo in a private letter.^[4]
• 1789 – Morais records the press beam feixe do lagar.^[16]
• 1813 – first record of enfeixar and desenfeixar.^[3]
• 1871 – Vieira records the figurative sense "great quantity".^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bundle of long objects tied together; a sheaf of straw or ears, a faggot of firewood: um feixe de canas.^[2][21][1]
2. (figurative) A great quantity of something: trouxe um feixe de queixas.^[2][21]
3. (anatomy, botany) A bundle of nerve or muscle fibres, or of vascular strands in a plant.^[2][22]
4. (physics, optics) A beam of particles or of rays of light moving along nearly parallel paths.^[2][18][1]
5. (linguistics) A set of features that together define a concept;^[2] feixe de isoglossas, a bundle of isoglosses marking a dialect boundary.^[2]
6. The beam that presses grapes or olives in a press.^[23][19]
7. (informal) feixe de nervos, a very nervous, irritable person;^[2][19] feixe de ossos, a very thin one.^[2][19]

Word family

• enfeixar
• desenfeixar

Related words

• faixa
• fascículo
• Latin fascis
• Galician feixe
• Spanish haz

Usage notes

In north-eastern Portugal (Freixo de Espada à Cinta) feixe also names a row of stones laid across the lowest point of a stream to raise the water.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. feixe
3. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. feixe
4. ^ 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. feixe
5. ^ a b Instituto da Lingua Galega, Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués (TLPGP), Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/tesouro, p. s.v. feixe
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. 212
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3214
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. fascis
9. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 328
10. ^ 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. fascis
11. ^ 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. feixe
12. ^ 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. feixe
13. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. fascis
14. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. feixe
15. ^ 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. feixe
16. ^ 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, 606
17. ^ a b 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, 630
18. ^ a b 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. feixe
19. ^ a b c d 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. feixe
20. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. feixe
21. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. feixe
22. ^ 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. feixe
23. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. feixe