fruta

Forms

fruta f (plural frutas)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote fruita and froyta;^[2][3] fructa appears in the 14th century and fruta in the 16th.^[2][3] Houaiss also records a form treuta before 1748.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin fructa, written Old Galician-Portuguese fruita and Old Galician-Portuguese froyta in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1] The Late Latin word was the neuter plural, with a collective sense, of Latin frūctus (“enjoyment; produce of the land”), which was a masculine of the fourth declension but came to be treated as a neuter of the second.^[2][4][5] The collective plural is known from the 7th century, and later became a feminine singular in Portuguese.^[3][4] The masculine singular gave fruto.^[2][1]

The same collective is Galician froita, Spanish fruta, Italian frutta and Occitan frucha.^[6][4][7] Galician keeps the diphthong of the medieval form; the Portuguese spelling without it is recorded from the 16th century.^[2][7]

The Latin noun is formed from fruor (“to enjoy (the produce of)”) with the suffix -tus.^[8][1] Wiktionary takes the verb back through Proto-Italic *frūjōr to Proto-Indo-European *bʰruHg- (“to use, enjoy”), the root of Proto-Germanic *brūkaną (“to make use of”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lorenzo's chronology gives the Galician charters of 1261, partila froyta de por meo cada ano “to share the fruit half and half each year”, and of 1264, vj moyos de froyta “six measures of fruit”.^[3] In the Cantigas de Santa Maria the word is fruita: a land rich de pan, de vynno, de carne e de fruita saborosa “in bread, wine, meat and tasty fruit”, and the fruit that God forbade to Eve.^[9] The sense is the edible fruit of trees, as a whole.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The collective sense has remained the core: Pereira in 1697 glosses it with Latin pomum and fructus, and Bluteau in 1712 defines it as the fruits of trees in general, adding that fruit sellers distinguished fruta miúda, fruta redonda and fruta de cabeça, and that nuts are “fruit with a shell”.^[10][11] Morais in 1789 also records it as the name of a kind of apricot.^[12]

Brazilian Portuguese gave it informal senses: “sugar-cane spirit” in Pernambuco, and a slang word for a male homosexual in the north-east and Minas Gerais.^[2][13][14] A figurative sense “something rare” is also recorded.^[2][14] The word passed into Kabuverdianu, Guinea-Bissau Creole and Papiamentu as fruta.^[1]

Timeline

• 1152 – Lorenzo's chronology, after Machado, cites the form fruita.^[3]
• 1261 – froyta in a Galician charter; again in 1264.^[3]
• 13th century – fruita in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[9][2]
• 1395 – ssaluo fructa e vinhos “except fruit and wines” in a Portuguese text.^[3]
• 16th century – the modern spelling fruta.^[2]
• 1576 – frutas in a private letter.^[15]
• 1697 – Pereira's Thesouro heads the word Fruta.^[10]
• 1712 – Bluteau names the kinds of fruit sold in the market.^[11]
• 1789 – Morais adds a kind of apricot called fruta.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. fruit, as a whole: the edible, usually fleshy and sweet fruits of plants.^[2][16][1]
2. A single piece of fruit.^[16][1]
3. (figurative) Something rare and highly prized.^[2][14]
4. (Brazil, informal) Sugar-cane spirit, cachaça.^[2][13]
5. (north-eastern Brazil and Minas Gerais, slang, offensive) A male homosexual.^[2][13]

Related words

• fruto
• Latin frūctus
• Galician froita
• Spanish fruta

Usage notes

Common set phrases are fruta da época “fruit in season” and fruta cristalizada “candied fruit”.^[17] A countryman's saying of southern Brazil runs fruta pela manhã é ouro; à tarde, prata; e de noite, mata “fruit in the morning is gold, in the afternoon silver, and at night it kills”.^[18]

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 k l m n o Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. fruta
3. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. froyta
4. ^ a b c Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 228
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. fruta
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3537
7. ^ a b Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. froita
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c 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. fruita
10. ^ 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. fruta
11. ^ 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. fruta
12. ^ 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, 640
13. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. fruta
14. ^ 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. fruta
15. ^ 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. fruta
16. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. fruta
17. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 4499
18. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. fruta