fio

Forms

fio m (plural fios)^[1] Houaiss records fi in the 13th century, fio and fyo in the 14th and fiio in the 15th.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin fīlum (“thread”), written Old Galician-Portuguese fio in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1][4]

The same Latin word is Galician fío, Spanish hilo, Catalan fil, French fil, Italian filo and Romanian fir.^[5][1] Spanish also has filo “cutting edge”, an archaic or foreign doublet of the same word, where Portuguese uses the one word for both.^[6][2]

De Vaan derives the Latin word from Proto-Italic *fī(s)lo- and Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰiH-(s-)lo- (“sinew, sinew thread”), comparing gïau (“sinews”) and words for bowstring in Indo-Iranian and Greek.^[7] Wiktionary adds gysla (“vein, sinew”) and ջիլ (ǰil, “sinew”); the OLD calls the connection doubtful.^[1][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Cantigas de Santa Maria the Virgin gives fios to a good man so that he can sew, and a spider drops into a chalice on a thread (per un fi’ ũa aranna).^[9] The Crónica Troiana has a censer hanging from fios de ouro, and a document of 1364 lists dez e sejs peças de ffio de prata “sixteen pieces of silver wire”.^[9] Machado had dated the word to 1441;^[9] Lorenzo's 13th-century records take it back more than a century and a half.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The cantigas already use a fio “continuously, without a break”.^[10] Barbosa (1611) has fios for the lint laid on wounds, and Bluteau the phrase fio a fio and fio de carreto, a rope-maker's term he took to be French.^[11][12] Folqman (1755) records the edge of a sword, a string of pearls and tears running em fio.^[13] Cunha's definition joins the thread, the thin stream of liquid, the sequence of a story and the cutting edge.^[3]

Silva Bastos (1912) adds a one-wire snare for birds and estar no fio “to be threadbare”.^[14] The 19th and 20th centuries brought the electric wire and the telephone line, and on the internet fio has become a series of linked messages, a semantic loan from English thread.^[2][1]

Timeline

• 13th century – fios in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[9][2][3]
• 1364 – ffio de prata “silver wire” in a document.^[9]
• c. 1430 – fio in the Horto do Esposo.^[15]
• 16th century – first records of desfiar and enfiar.^[3]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists fios for wounds.^[11]
• 1755 – Folqman records fio da espada “edge of the sword”.^[13]
• 1899 – Figueiredo defines the word as the fibre drawn from textile plants and as the edge of a blade.^[16]
• 1912 – Silva Bastos records estar no fio.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A thread, a thin flexible fibre, natural or synthetic: um fio de lã.^[2][17][1]
2. Twisted thread, string, twine.^[2][1]
3. A wire; an electric wire or cable.^[2][18][1]
4. A string of beads; a fine chain of gold or silver.^[2][1]
5. The thread spun by spiders and silkworms.^[2]
6. A trickle, a thin stream of liquid.^[2][17][1]
7. The grain of wood or stone.^[2]
8. (figurative) Something faint or fragile: um fio de esperança.^[2][19]
9. The cutting edge of a blade.^[2][17][1]
10. The thread of a story or argument; continuity: perder o fio.^[2][17]
11. (printing) A rule, a metal strip that prints a line; the line itself.^[2]
12. A telephone or telegraph line.^[2]
13. (internet) A thread of messages.^[1]
14. (in the plural) The means or strings by which something is managed.^[2][16]

Word family

• afiar
• afiado
• desfiar
• enfiar
• fiapo
• fio dental

Related words

• afilar
• desfilar
• desfile
• fila
• filamento
• filé
• fileira
• filete
• fiar
• Latin fīlum
• Galician fío
• Spanish hilo

Usage notes

A fio and fio a fio mean “one after another, without a break”, and fio dental is dental floss.^[2][1][13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. fio
3. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. fio
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. fio
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3306
6. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hilo
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. fīlum
9. ^ a b c d e f 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. fio
10. ^ 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. fio
11. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. fio
12. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. fio
13. ^ a b c Folqman, Carlos (1755), Diccionario portuguez, e latino, Lisboa: Régia Officina Silviana (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. fio
14. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. fio
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. fio
16. ^ a b Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. fio
17. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. fio
18. ^ 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. fio
19. ^ 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. fio