idade

Forms

idade f (plural idades)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote ydade and jdade, and idade from the 14th century.^[2][3] The spelling edade, of the 18th century, imitated the Latin.^[2] Silva Bastos (1912) still enters idade as a spelling that some lexicographers followed for edade.^[4][1]

Etymology

The word is inherited from Latin, written Old Galician-Portuguese ydade and Old Galician-Portuguese jdade in the oldest texts, but the sources disagree on the Latin form.^[2][3]

Houaiss takes it as inherited from Latin aevitās (“lifetime, age”), the archaic form that Latin replaced with aetās: the Portuguese word has initial /i-/ from its first records, whereas the classical form would require an old form with /e-/, which is not found.^[2] Nascentes first followed the classical form, but in 1966 chose the archaic one, through an older form with /ei-/ that Galician eidade and a Leonese form still show; the REW lists the Portuguese word in the same group.^[2][5][6][7] Cunha, Aurélio, the DLP and Wiktionary derive it from the classical form.^[3][8][9][1]

The classical word is a contraction of the archaic one, which is aevum (“duration, lifetime”) with the suffix -tās.^[10][1] It goes back to Proto-Italic *aiwotāts and Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyu- (“vital energy; lifetime”).^[11][12] The same Latin word is Spanish edad, Catalan edat, Occitan edat and Italian età, while French âge comes from a derivative.^[7][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date ydade and jdade to the 13th century.^[2][3] The Portuguese translation of the Fuero Real has todo ome que nõ for de ydade “every man who is not of age” and de ydade conprida “of full age”, and a charter of 1288 speaks of a person reaching the age to manage his property.^[13]

Semantic evolution

The medieval chronicles already use the word for a person's years, tan pequeno era de jdade que non auja aynda vijnt años “he was so young that he was not yet twenty”, and for old age, de grande ydade.^[13] Bluteau distinguishes four senses: the whole course of a life, each stage of it, the time already lived, and time in general, an era.^[14]

From the sense “era” come the names of historical and prehistoric periods, Idade Média and idade da pedra, and geology uses the word for its smallest unit of time.^[2][8][15] Modern phrases are terceira idade “old age” and idade crítica “menopause”.^[16][2]

Timeline

• 13th century – ydade in the Portuguese translation of the Fuero Real;^[13][2][3] jdade is also of this century.^[13][2][3]
• 1288 – ydade in a charter.^[13]
• 14th century – the spelling idade, and the derivative idoso.^[2][3]
• c. 1510 – idade in the Vida de Santo Agostinho (witness 1480–1510).^[17]
• 1556 – a private letter writes hydade.^[18]
• 1569 – Cardoso translates Idade as aetas and aevum.^[19]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau distinguishes four senses of the word.^[14]
• 18th century – the Latinising spelling edade.^[2]
• 1912 – Silva Bastos enters idade as a spelling some lexicographers followed.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. age: the time a person or thing has lived or existed: Que idade tem o teu irmão?^[2][8][1]
2. The length of a life, lifespan.^[2][8]
3. A stage of life: na idade adulta.^[2][8][16]
4. old age: pessoas de idade.^[2][8][9]
5. An era, a historical or prehistoric period: a Idade do Ferro, a Idade Média.^[2][8][15]
6. (geology) The smallest unit of geological time, below the epoch.^[2]

Word family

• idoso

Related words

• eterno
• Latin aetās
• Galician idade
• Spanish edad

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. idade
3. ^ a b c d e f g Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. idade
4. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. idade
6. ^ a b 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. idade
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b c d e f g Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. idade
9. ^ 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. idade
10. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 545
11. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. aetas
12. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. aevum
13. ^ a b c d e 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. ydade
14. ^ a b Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro)
15. ^ a b 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. idade
16. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. idade
17. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. idade
18. ^ 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. idade
19. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro)