grou

Forms

grou m (plural grous, feminine grua, feminine plural gruas)^[1] The feminine is grua.^[1][2] Wiktionary gives the medieval form as Old Galician-Portuguese gru, and Cunha records grua as a feminine noun in the 14th century.^[1][3]

Etymology

The word for the bird is inherited from Latin grus (“crane”), which was feminine and only rarely masculine in Latin.^[4][5][1] The ending is explained by a Latin form *gruus for the accusative of the Latin word, remade after a feminine grua and changed in the same way as duos > Old Galician-Portuguese doos > dous, and the word settled in the masculine in Portuguese.^[5][6][3] That feminine is found in the Salic Law, and the old Portuguese fables of Aesop have the feminine Old Galician-Portuguese grua too.^[5]

The same Latin word is Galician grúa, Spanish grulla, Catalan grua, French grue and Italian gru.^[7][1] The Spanish word is an alteration of older Old Spanish gruya or grúa.^[8]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Indo-European *gr̥h₂ú-, from the root *gerh₂- (“to cry hoarsely”), which gave several bird names.^[1] De Vaan compares Ancient Greek γέρανος (géranos), Welsh garan and Lithuanian gérvė, all meaning “crane”.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A satirical cantiga attributed to Afonso X speaks of making grous out of crows: que semelhen grous / os corvos “so that crows look like cranes”.^[10][11] Houaiss dates the word to the 15th century and Cunha to the 14th.^[4][3]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau (1712–1728) describes the crane at length, with its migration in triangular formation and its winters in Africa.^[12] In the 19th century the word also named the southern constellation, written with a capital.^[13][14][15] The feminine grua took the sense of a lifting machine, which Cunha dates to 1813 and traces to French grue.^[3][2] The DLP records the crane in heraldry, standing in profile with a stone in its raised foot, and an Alentejo use for a small plot of land.^[16]

Timeline

• 14th century – the feminine grua.^[3]
• 15th century – Houaiss's first date for grou.^[4]
• 1569 – Cardoso's dictionary lists grou, Latin grus.^[17]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists Grou, ave.^[18]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau describes the bird and its migration.^[12]
• 1789 – Morais lists grou and, separately, grua as the pulley of a hoist.^[19]
• 1813 – grua as a lifting machine.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (ornithology) A crane, any bird of the family Gruidae: large, long-legged and long-necked wading birds with a straight bill.^[4][16][1]
2. (astronomy, capitalised) Grus, a small constellation of the southern sky.^[14][16]
3. (heraldry) A crane shown in profile with the right foot raised, holding a stone.^[16]
4. (regional, Alentejo) A small plot of land.^[16]

Word family

• esgrouviado
• esgrouvinhar

Related words

• Latin grus
• Galician grúa
• Spanish grulla
• French grue

Usage notes

Houaiss, Aulete and the DLP also record a separate noun grou, from 1541: in India, a man of the Shudra caste who serves in a Hindu temple;^{[4][14][16][20]} Dalgado, who preferred the spelling gurou, derives it from the Konkani and Marathi gurav, a derivative of guru.^{[4][14][16][20]}

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 4797
3. ^ a b c d e f Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. grou
4. ^ 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. grou
5. ^ 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. s.v. grou
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. grou
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3896
8. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 223
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Universo Cantigas: Glosario da poesía medieval profana galego-portuguesa, A Coruña: Instituto da Lingua e Literatura (ILLA), Universidade da Coruña, https://www.universocantigas.gal, p. s.v. grou
11. ^ 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. grou
12. ^ 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. grou
13. ^ 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, 929
14. ^ a b c d 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. grou
15. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1952), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 2: Nomes próprios, Rio de Janeiro, p. 164
16. ^ a b c d e f g 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. grou
17. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. grou
18. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. grou
19. ^ 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, 71
20. ^ a b Dalgado, Sebastião Rodolfo (1919–1921), Glossário luso-asiático, 2 vols., Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, p. 1, 444