fundar

Forms

fundar (first-person singular present fundo, first-person singular preterite fundei, past participle fundado)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote both fundar and fũdar.^[1] A private letter of 1567 still has the abbreviated spelling fũdou “he founded”.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin fundō (“to lay the foundations of”), written Old Galician-Portuguese fundar in the oldest texts.^[3][4][1] Nascentes calls it a learned form.^[5] García de Diego lists the old Galician form fondar with the sense “to go to the bottom”, and calls the Spanish form with ⟨u⟩ a learned word.^[6]

The same Latin verb is Spanish fundar, Catalan fondar, Occitan fondar, French fonder and Italian fondare.^[7][1] In Medieval Latin it was the usual word for founding a church or a monastery.^[8][9]

The Latin verb is formed from fundus (“bottom, base”).^[3][10][1] The noun goes back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰudʰmḗn (“bottom”), with cognates such as Sanskrit बुध्न (budhná, “bottom, root”) and the English word bottom.^[1][10] fundir comes from a separate Latin verb meaning “to pour”.^[1][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Latin charters of 870 and 882 already use the verb for founding a church: baselica sita et fundata est in villa “a church situated and founded in the estate”.^[12] The DDGM cites fundar from a document of 1234–1236, and Cunha dates the Portuguese verb to the 13th century.^[12][4] Houaiss's first record is of the 14th century.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The first sense was material: to lay the foundations of a building and raise it, which Cardoso glosses in 1569 with the Latin verb and Pereira in 1697 with the phrase “to lay foundations”.^[13][14] From buildings it passed to institutions: Feijó wrote in 1734 that to found buildings or a religion is to give them a beginning, and that fundar-se em something is to make it one's basis.^[15] Morais in 1789 adds “to establish on a principle, a fact, a testimony” and the old sense “to sound, to fathom”.^[16]

Because of fundo “bottom” and “deep” the verb also means “to make deeper”, and Morais already records fundar huma vasilha, to fit a bottom to a cask, which Silva Bastos places in the Bairrada region and Houaiss labels European.^[16][17][3] Brazilian dialects use it for water that grows deep, and for going deep into a place.^[18]

Timeline

• 870 – a Latin charter has baselica … fundata est “the church was founded”.^[12]
• 1234–1236 – fundar in a document cited by the DDGM.^[12]
• 13th century – Cunha's date for the Portuguese verb.^[4]
• 1450 – the Livro das tres vertudes has the verb.^[19]
• 1569 – Cardoso's dictionary glosses it with the Latin verb.^[13]
• 1734 – Feijó explains fundar as giving a beginning to buildings or a religion.^[15]
• 1789 – Morais records fundar huma vasilha “to fit a bottom to a cask”.^[16]
• 1871 – Vieira derives the verb from Latin fundus.^[20]

Meanings

Verb

1. To lay the foundations of a building; to build from the foundations up.^[3][21][22]
2. To found, establish or set up an institution, a town or a business: fundaram a associação em 1990.^[3][21][1]
3. To base on;^[3][23][24] (reflexive) to rest on, to be grounded in (fundar-se em): a decisão funda-se em dados recentes.^[3][23][24]
4. To make deeper, to deepen (a hole, a well); (intransitive) to go deep, to take deep root.^[3][21]
5. (finance) To convert a debt into a funded one, consolidate it.^[3]
6. (Portugal) To fit the bottom or head into a cask or barrel.^[3][23]

Word family

• fundado
• infundado

Related words

• fundo
• fundação
• fundador
• fundamento
• afundar
• profundo
• fundir
• Spanish fundar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. fundar
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. fundar
4. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. fundo
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. fundar
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. fundare
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3580
8. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. fundare
9. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre, p. s.v. fundare
10. ^ 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
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. fundo
12. ^ a b c d 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. fundar
13. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. fundar
14. ^ 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. fundar
15. ^ a b 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. fundar
16. ^ a b c 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, 643
17. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. fundar
18. ^ 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. fundar
19. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. fundar
20. ^ 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, 799
21. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. fundar
22. ^ 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. fundar
23. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. fundar
24. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 4525