gota

Forms

gota f (plural gotas, diminutive gotinha, augmentative gotona)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin gutta (“drop”), written Old Galician-Portuguese gota in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1]

The same Latin word is Galician gota, Spanish gota, Catalan gota, Occitan gota, French goutte and Italian gotta; Romanian gută means “gout”, and the REW notes that the word means “gout” as well almost everywhere.^[4][1]

De Vaan finds no etymology for the Latin word.^[5] Wiktionary mentions a possible link with Old Armenian կաթն (katʻn, “milk”) or with *ǵʰewd- (“to pour”).^[1]

The sense “gout” is very old: Corominas traces it to a rendering of Ancient Greek ῥεῦμα (rheûma, “flow, flux”), and Nascentes, followed by Houaiss, explains it by the belief that the disease came from drops of a bad humour.^[6][7][2][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Both senses appear in the Cantigas de Santa Maria: in one, someone goes to a spring with a jug, but the water flees que sol gota non pude dela fillar “so that not even a drop of it could be taken”; in another a mule suffers great pain de gota que aas pernas e aos pees ouvera “from the gout it had in its legs and feet”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The Crónica Troiana uses gotas for spots on an animal's coat.^[9] Barbosa (1611) has gota e gota “drop by drop”.^[10] Morais (1789) records the medical terms gota artética “gout of the joints”, gota coral “epilepsy” and gota serena “blindness without visible damage to the eye”, and the architectural gotas, the small ornaments of the Doric frieze.^[11] In Brazilian popular speech gota can still mean epilepsy, and one survey recorded it for the uvula.^[12][13]

Timeline

• 13th century – gota “drop” and “gout” in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[9][3]
• 14th century – first record of the derivatives gotejar and gotoso.^[14][15]
• 1390–1437 – the Horto do Esposo has gota, its first occurrence in the CTA corpus.^[16]
• 16th century – first record of esgotar.^[3]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists gota, goteyra and gota e gota.^[10]
• 1789 – Morais records gota coral and gota serena.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A drop of liquid: Caíam gotas de chuva na janela.^[2][17][1]
2. A very small amount of a liquid or of anything: Não sobrou uma gota de leite.^[2][17]
3. A bead of dew or of sweat.^[17]
4. (architecture) A small ornament on the frieze of a Doric column, a gutta.^[2][18]
5. (medicine) gout, a disease of the joints caused by too much uric acid in the blood.^[2][18][1]
6. (Brazil, popular) Epilepsy (epilepsia).^[12]

Word family

• esgotar
• gotejar
• goteira
• gotoso
• gotado

Related words

• Latin gutta
• Galician gota

Usage notes

The set phrase gota a gota means “drop by drop, little by little”.^[17][18]

A separate noun gota, with an open /ɔ/, names a folk dance of the Minho region, like the fandango, of unknown origin according to Wiktionary.^[1] Gamas (1941), quoted in the TLPGP, recorded it in Portugal as a music and dance, and took it from Spanish jota.^[13] Aurélio also has a masculine gota, a German bomber of the First World War, named after the town of Gotha.^[17]

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. gota
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. gota
4. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3928
5. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. gota
7. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 183
8. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 246
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. gota
10. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. gota
11. ^ 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, 64
12. ^ 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. gota
13. ^ a b 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. gota
14. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. gotejar
15. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. gotoso
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. gota
17. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. gota
18. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. gota