gear

Forms

gear (impersonal, third-person singular present geia, third-person singular preterite geou, past participle geado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin gelō (“to freeze”), through an unrecorded medieval Old Galician-Portuguese *gear.^[2][1][3] Houaiss calls it the divergent form of gelar, which Wiktionary treats as a borrowing of the same Latin verb, so the two are doublets.^[1] The inherited verb lacks the ⟨l⟩ between vowels that ⟨gelar⟩ keeps.^[2][1] Silva Bastos and Figueiredo described it as a contraction of the longer verb.^[4][5]

The same Latin verb is Galician xear, Spanish helar, Catalan gelar, French geler and Italian gelare.^[6][1][7] The REW also lists the noun geada “hoarfrost” among the derivatives of the Latin verb in Portuguese, beside Spanish helada and Italian gelata.^[6]

The Latin word is formed from gelū (“frost, cold”) with a verbal suffix.^[8][1] Wiktionary takes the noun back to Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“cold”), the root of cold; it notes that the verb may instead be built on the rarer form gelum.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the verb to the 15th century, from the slips of Cunha's index of medieval Portuguese, in the sense “to form frost”;^[9] Cunha himself records it only from the 17th century.^[2][9] The first dictionary to list it is Cardoso's of 1569, which glosses it with Latin gelo and pruino “to cover with hoarfrost”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau (1712–1728) defines it as the dew freezing in the cold.^[11] Morais (1789) has it both as a transitive verb, “to cause frost to fall on something”, quoting Lobo's seventh eclogue, and as an intransitive one, “for frost to fall”.^[12] Houaiss and Figueiredo add the senses “to turn to ice” and, by extension, “to be bitterly cold”.^[2][5] The DLP records a figurative sense, “to make someone insensitive or indifferent”.^[13]

Timeline

• 15th century – first record, in the sense “to form frost”.^[2]
• 1569 – Cardoso's dictionary lists gear.^[10]
• 17th century – Cunha's first date for the verb.^[9]
• 1697 – Pereira glosses it with Latin gelo and glacio.^[14]
• 1789 – Morais distinguishes the transitive and intransitive uses.^[12]
• 1899 – Figueiredo adds “to be excessively cold”.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. (impersonal) For frost to form or fall: Ontem à noite geou no vale.^[2][15][1]
2. (of winter) To bring frost.^[2][15]
3. To turn to ice; to freeze something.^[2][16][17]
4. (by extension) To be bitterly cold.^[2][16]
5. (figurative) To make someone insensitive or indifferent.^[13]

Related words

• gelar
• geada
• gelo
• congelar
• Latin gelō
• Galician xear
• Spanish helar

Usage notes

Aurélio notes that in its first sense the verb is defective, used only in the third person, and is conjugated like frear (geia, geou).^[15][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. gear
3. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. gear
4. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. gear
5. ^ a b c Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. gear
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. gelare
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. s.v. gear
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. gelo
10. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. gear
11. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. gear
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, 656
13. ^ a b 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. gear
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. gear
15. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. gear
16. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. gear
17. ^ 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. gear