inhame

Forms

inhame m (plural inhames)^[1] Old spellings are jnhame and ynhame.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is a word of African origin, but the sources do not agree on the language.^[2][3] Wiktionary considers it probably borrowed from Wolof ñàmbi (“cassava”) or a related word.^[1] Aurélio proposes Yoruba iyã or Mandinka iyambi.^[4] Friederici names the plant and the word as West African, citing African forms like it.^[5] Houaiss calls the origin disputed and reports Nei Lopes's remark that a root of this shape is the root of words for “to eat” in non-Bantu languages, and that some consider it Bantu as well.^[2]

Nascentes thought the word probably onomatopoeic, and Corominas, discussing Spanish ñame, leaves open whether it is an inherited African word or one created in the first contacts between the Portuguese and Africans from an imitation of the sound of eating.^[6][7] The DLP calls the origin obscure.^[8]

Friederici notes that the Portuguese brought the word, with some botanical confusion, from their African voyages to America, and the Spanish word is recorded from Columbus's journal of 1492.^[5][7] The English word yam (1580s, at first in a French-like spelling) comes from the Portuguese word or from Spanish, and it passed also into French igname and Italian igname.^[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Pero Vaz de Caminha's letter of 1500 says that the people there gave the Portuguese muito jnhame “much yam” and other seeds to eat, and that they ate nothing but this nhame, of which there was plenty.^[5][10] João Ribeiro, quoted by Nascentes, saw in this that the African word was already familiar to the Portuguese navigators.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In the early records the word is a general name for a starchy tuber eaten instead of bread: Cardoso glosses it in 1569 as “Ethiopian bread”, and a 1551 account of São Tomé says that the black people of the island call inhame the root the Indians of Hispaniola call batata.^[12][11] Pereira and Bluteau identify it with the classical colocasia or “Egyptian bean”.^[13][14] Today it names plants of two families, the aroids (taro) and the yams, a confusion that Friederici traces to the first voyages.^[2][5] In north-eastern Brazil the word is also slang for the penis.^[15] It passed into Macanese as nhame and inhame.^[1]

Timeline

• 1500 – jnhame and nhame in Caminha's letter.^[5]
• 1507 – inhames in a roteiro.^[5]
• c. 1508 – the spelling ynhame.^[2]
• 1551 – an account of the voyage to São Tomé describes the inhame as the islanders' staple food.^[11]
• 1569 – Cardoso lists inhame as panis aethiopicus.^[12]
• 1580s – English borrows the word as igname, later yam.^[9]
• 1789 – Morais describes a floury root like a large potato, from the plant called taioba in Brazil.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. A common name for several plants of the arum family and the yam family with edible tubers and, in some, edible leaves.^[2][4][1]
2. taro, Colocasia esculenta, with roundish tubers, native to tropical Asia and cultivated worldwide; taioba.^[2]
3. The tuber of these plants, used as food: Fizemos um purê de inhame para o almoço.^[8][1]
4. (north-eastern Brazil, vulgar) The penis.^[15]

Related words

• cará
• Spanish ñame

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 g Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. inhame
3. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. inhame
4. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. inhame
5. ^ a b c d e f Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter, p. 450
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. inhame
7. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ñame
8. ^ 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. inhame
9. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ 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. inhame
11. ^ 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)
12. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. inhame
13. ^ 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. inhame
14. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. inhame
15. ^ a b Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. inhame
16. ^ 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, 720