jaguar

Forms

jaguar m (plural jaguares)^[1] The oldest Portuguese record is the plural jaguares (1610); the singular jaguar is dated about 1777.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Tupi îagûara, a name the Tupi gave to the big cats of the cat genus, above all the jaguar.^[2][3][4] Houaiss writes the Tupi word ⟨ya'gwara⟩ and notes that an older dictionary derived it from both Guarani ⟨yaguara⟩ and Tupi ⟨jaguara⟩.^[2] Wiktionary takes the Tupi word back to Proto-Tupi-Guarani *jawar.^[4]

The longer form jaguaretê is îagûareté, from the same word and eté (“true”), and corresponds to Guarani yaguareté.^[5][6][7] Brazilian Portuguese also has jaguara, taken from the same Tupi word, a doublet.^[8]

The meaning of the Tupi word has been much discussed.^[9] Batista Caetano read it as “the one that eats people” or “the one that seizes”, and Teodoro Sampaio as “the one that devours”;^[9] Lokotsch remarked that Quechua jahuar means “blood” and thought the word might have spread east into Guarani from the time of the Inca empire.^[9] Porto Editora repeats the gloss “the one that eats people”.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the first Portuguese record, the plural jaguares, to 1610, with the sense of the American big cat.^[2][3] The Tupi name had already reached Europe through other languages: the 1557 edition of Hans Staden's account has Jau ware, and Lescarbot in 1609 writes of a beast called Janou-aré, almost as tall as a greyhound and rather like an ounce.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Houaiss reports Luiz Caldas Tibiriçá's view that jaguara was the Tupi name of the jaguar and was later extended to dogs; to keep them apart, from the 17th or 18th century the jaguar was called jaguaretê “true jaguar” and the dog jaguamimbaba “tame jaguar”.^[11] The longer form is recorded in Portuguese from about 1584, earlier than jaguar itself.^[5]

In Brazilian use jaguar is a synonym of onça and onça-pintada, and Silva Bastos in 1912 gives the name tigre da América beside it.^[2][12] In southern Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina the animal is also called tigre, and jaguareté or yaguareté in the Spanish of the Plate.^[13] From Portuguese the word passed into English, where Etymonline dates it to about 1600, and into Catalan.^[14][4]

Timeline

• 1557 – Hans Staden's account writes the Tupi name Jau ware.^[7]
• c. 1584 – first record of jaguaretê.^[5]
• c. 1600 – the English word jaguar is first recorded, from Portuguese.^[14]
• 1609 – Lescarbot writes the name in French as Janou-aré.^[7]
• 1610 – first Portuguese record, in the plural jaguares.^[2][3]
• c. 1777 – the singular jaguar is recorded.^[2]
• 1889 – first record of jaguara in a dictionary.^[11]
• 1912 – Silva Bastos defines the jaguar as a very fierce four-footed animal of the cat kind, also called the American tiger.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. The jaguar (Panthera onca), the large spotted feline of the Americas, yellowish with black rosettes; the same as onça or onça-pintada.^{[2][15][16][17]}

Related words

• jaguaretê
• jaguara
• onça
• Tupi îagûara

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. jaguar
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. jaguar
4. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. jaguar
5. ^ a b c Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. jaguaretê
6. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. jaguaretê
7. ^ a b c d Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter, p. 324
8. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. jaguara
9. ^ 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. 283
10. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 5449
11. ^ a b Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. jaguara
12. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. jaguar
13. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. jaguar
14. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com, p. s.v. jaguar
15. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. jaguar
16. ^ 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. jaguar
17. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. jaguar