foz

Forms

foz f (plural fozes)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin fōx (“narrow passage; river mouth”), the Vulgar Latin form of Latin faux (“throat, gullet; narrow pass”), written Old Galician-Portuguese foz in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1] The classical word was mostly used in the plural faucēs, and the form with the vowel /o/ is recorded by Isidore of Seville.^[2][4][5] Wiktionary calls the Vulgar Latin form an early monophthongised variant, and Meyer-Lübke accepted that /au/ became /o/ already in Latin here.^[1][6][7] Cornu found the open vowel of the Portuguese word odd where a close one was expected, and Nunes explained it by analogy with other nouns of the same ending, as Nascentes reports.^[7]

The same Latin form is Galician foz, Spanish hoz, Italian foce, Old Occitan fotz and Friulian fôs.^[6][1] The Spanish word, in the sense “narrow valley”, is first recorded as Old Spanish foc in a document of 1011.^[8]

De Vaan finds no etymology for the Latin word.^[5] Houaiss notes that other languages named the river mouth after the mouth of the body, as in French embouchure, from bouche, which goes back to Latin bucca (“cheek”).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Latin charters of the region already use the Romance word for the mouth of a river: usque ad foce de pauiola in 883 and in illa foce de durio “at the mouth of the Douro” in 922.^[4] In Galician-Portuguese the Cantigas de Santa Maria tell of a ship that put in na foz de Roma and of men who could not get out pela foz daquele rio “by the mouth of that river”, and a document of 1274 speaks of todas as barcas que entrarem pela foz do Rio d' alcaçar “all the boats that enter by the mouth of the river of Alcácer”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Beside the river mouth, the medieval language had the sense “narrow mountain valley, gorge”: the Galician translation of the Crónica Geral and the Crónica de 1344 speak of a foz de Lara, where the word stands for a district.^[4] Lorenzo notes that the sense “gorge” has fallen out of use.^[4] Morais (1789) still gives first the sense “narrow passage on land or at sea between two banks or hills”, then the river mouth, and records the phrase de foz em fora “out past the bar”, figuratively “beyond reason”, and a foz do papo, the entrance of a bird's crop, from a treatise on hawking.^[9] The DLP labels the sense “narrow pass” obsolete.^[10]

The word lives on in place names such as Foz do Douro in Porto and Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil, which are often called simply Foz.^[1]

Timeline

• 883 – a Latin charter has usque ad foce de pauiola.^[4]
• 922 – in illa foce de durio, the mouth of the Douro, in a Latin charter.^[4]
• 1105 – foz de Valboo in a Latin document.^[4]
• 13th century – the Cantigas de Santa Maria have na foz de Roma.^[4] Houaiss and Cunha date the word to this century.^[4][2][3]
• 1274 – a document speaks of the boats that enter pela foz do Rio d' alcaçar.^[4]
• 1304 – a ffoz de santa Susana in a document.^[4]
• 1344 – the Crónica de 1344 has a par da foz de Lara.^[4]
• 1755 – Folqman glosses foz of a river as Latin fluminis ostium.^[11]
• 1789 – Morais records the sense “gorge” and the phrase de foz em fora.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. The mouth of a river: the point where a river or stream flows into the sea, a lake or another river; desembocadura, embocadura.^{[2][12][10][1]}
2. (obsolete) A narrow pass between mountains; a gorge, desfiladeiro.^[10][13]
3. (figurative) A narrow entrance.^[13]

Related words

• fauce
• Galician foz
• Spanish hoz
• Italian foce

Usage notes

The phrase de foz em fora means “out past the bar, out to sea” and, figuratively, “to excess, beyond measure”.^[2][14][10]

Alfoz “district” is a separate word, from Andalusian Arabic, although the medieval chronicles use foz in the same sense.^[15][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. foz
3. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. foz
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. foz
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, p. s.v. faux
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3225
7. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 224
8. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 408
9. ^ 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, 632
10. ^ 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. foz
11. ^ Folqman, Carlos (1755), Diccionario portuguez, e latino, Lisboa: Régia Officina Silviana (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. foz
12. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. foz
13. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. foz
14. ^ 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. foz
15. ^ Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. alfoz