fronte

Forms

fronte f (plural frontes)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin frōns (“forehead, brow; front”), written Old Galician-Portuguese fronte in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1][4] Nascentes alone calls it a learned word.^[5]

The same Latin word is Galician fronte, Spanish frente, Catalan front, French front, Italian fronte and Romanian frunte.^[6][1] The Spanish word was Old Spanish fruente from 1124 and took its present form in Nebrija's time.^[7] The Portuguese frente is a borrowing of that Spanish form, recorded from 1651, and so a doublet of this word.^[8][1]

De Vaan finds no plausible etymology for the Latin word: the Celtic and Germanic words for “side” or “steep” compared with it are too vague in meaning, and a link with the Indo-European word for “eyebrow” would leave its suffix unexplained.^[9] Wiktionary reports Pokorny's root Proto-Indo-European *bʰren- (“to project”), which de Vaan rejects.^[1] Latin had a separate homonym meaning “foliage”, with the stem ⟨frond-⟩, the source of fronde.^[10][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lorenzo's chronology antedates Machado, who had the word only from the 16th century, with the Cantigas de Santa Maria: e doutra parte de fronte / avia un mõesteyro “and on the other side, opposite, there was a monastery”, and assi que britada / ll' ouveron toda a fronte “so that they had broken his whole forehead”.^[4] The same text says of sinners that they will have written on their foreheads all they did (terrán escrito nas frontes quanto fezeron).^[4] The word thus meant “forehead” from the start, and de fronte “opposite”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The Crónica Troiana uses the word as a masculine, for the single eye that certain creatures have ẽno meo do fronte “in the middle of the forehead”, and a charter of 1303 has en ffronte da plaza “facing the square”.^[4] Barbosa (1611) and Pereira (1697) enter the word only in de fronte “opposite”, glossed with Latin e regione;^[11][12][13] Bluteau (1712) adds the sense “forehead, face”, with a verse that speaks of an altiva Fronte “proud brow”.^[11][12][13] Morais (1813) records the front part of a thing, a coast seen from the sea and the vanguard of a battle.^[14] Houaiss extends the sense to the forehead of animals, the face, the head, the front line and the façade of a building.^[2]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[4][2][3]
• 1303 – en ffronte da plaza “facing the square” in a charter.^[4]
• c. 1430 – fronte in the Horto do Esposo (witness of 1390–1437).^[15]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists de fronte “opposite”.^[11]
• 1651 – the doublet frente is borrowed from Spanish.^[8]
• 1712 – Bluteau gives the sense “forehead, face”.^[13]
• 1734 – Feijó explains fronte as “what is in sight” and as the same as frente or face.^[16]
• 1836 – first record of frontal.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. The forehead, brow: Franziu a fronte, preocupado.^[2][17][1]
2. The corresponding part of the head of an animal, especially of a bird.^[2][18]
3. The face; the head: de fronte erguida.^[2][17]
4. The front, the foremost part of something; the front line.^[2][1]
5. The façade of a building.^[2][17][19]
6. A coast or shore.^[2][18]

Word family

• afronta
• afrontar
• afrontamento
• defrontar
• defronte
• desafronta
• desafrontar
• frontaria
• fronteira
• fronteiro

Related words

• frente
• frontal
• frontispício
• fronde
• Latin frons

Usage notes

Curvar a fronte means “to bow one's head, to submit”, and fronte por fronte “face to face”.^[2][17] In Brazil fronte is also used as a masculine noun for the military front, a borrowing of French front.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. fronte
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. fronte
4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. fronte
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. fronte
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3533
7. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 953
8. ^ a b Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. frente
9. ^ 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
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3532
11. ^ a b c Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. fronte
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. fronte
13. ^ a b c Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. fronte
14. ^ Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 62
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. fronte
16. ^ 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. fronte
17. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. fronte
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. fronte
19. ^ 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. fronte