jaspe

Forms

jaspe m (plural jaspes)^[1] The oldest form is jaspis, in the 13th century;^[2][3] jaspe is recorded from the 14th.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin iaspis (“jasper, a green precious stone”), which is from Ancient Greek ἴασπις (íaspis).^[2][3][4][1] Houaiss notes that it continues the Latin nominative; the oldest form is Old Galician-Portuguese jaspis.^[2][3]

The same word is Spanish jaspe, first recorded as iaspis in the Libro de Alexandre and in its present form in Alfonso de Palencia, and French jaspe, borrowed in about 1119.^[5][6] Beekes considers the Greek word an oriental loan and compares Biblical Hebrew יָשְׁפֵה (yāšəfēh) and Akkadian yašpu, the name of a stone in Akkadian, perhaps from Egyptian.^[7][1] Older dictionaries derived the Portuguese word from Hebrew directly: Bluteau did, and Nascentes and the first Aurélio give a chain from Hebrew through Greek and Latin.^[8][9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date jaspis to the 13th century.^[2][3] The Crónica Troiana has jaspe, and the Galician Historia troiana tells of a king who kept in his treasury vn moymento de vn jaspe verde gotado “a tomb of spotted green jasper”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The word has always named the stone.^[2][3] Bluteau (1712) describes it as a precious stone like agate but less clear and harder to work, lists the healing virtues ascribed to it with some doubt, and names the green jasper spotted with red as the most valued.^[8] The DLP adds a veined marble and an object of art made of the stone, and the adjective jaspeado “mottled like jasper” is recorded from the 16th century and the verb jaspear from the 17th.^[12][3]

Timeline

• 13th century – first record, as jaspis.^[2][3]
• 14th century – the form jaspe.^[3]
• c. 1430 – jaspe in the Horto do Esposo (witness of 1390–1437).^[13]
• 16th century – first record of jaspeado.^[3]
• 1712 – Bluteau derives the word from Hebrew and describes the kinds of jasper.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. (mineralogy) jasper, an opaque, fine-grained variety of quartz of various colours, most often red, used for ornaments.^[2][4][1]
2. A veined marble.^[12][14]
3. An object of art made of jasper.^[12][14]

Word family

• jaspeado
• jaspeador
• jaspear

Related words

• Latin iaspis
• Spanish jaspe

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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. jaspe
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. jaspe
4. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. jaspe
5. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 499
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. jaspe
7. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. ἴασπις
8. ^ a b c Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. jaspe
9. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. jaspe
10. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda (1975), Novo dicionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, p. 823
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. jaspe
12. ^ a b c 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. jaspe
13. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. jaspe
14. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 5465