lançar

Forms

lançar (first-person singular present lanço, first-person singular preterite lancei, past participle lançado)^[1] Houaiss records the medieval spellings alãçar, lãçey and lancou from the 14th century and lamçou and llançar from the 15th.^[2] Cunha dates both lançar and the prefixed alançar to the 13th century.^[3] Feijó (1734) insists on the spelling lançar, with all its derivatives, against lansar.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin lanceō (“to wield a lance, to throw a lance”), written Old Galician-Portuguese lançar in the oldest texts.^[2][5][1] The Late Latin verb is formed on lancea (“lance, light spear”).^[1][6] Nascentes takes the Portuguese verb to have come down by a semi-learned route.^[7]

The same Latin verb is Galician lanzar, Spanish lanzar, Catalan llançar, Occitan lançar, French lancer and Italian lanciare.^[1] Wiktionary counts lancear and lança as doublets of the Portuguese verb.^[1]

The Romans themselves took the noun for a foreign word: Varro called it Spanish, while Festus compared Ancient Greek λόγχη (lónkhē).^[8][9] The OLD and Wiktionary consider it apparently Celtic, and the DLE and Corominas think of Celtiberian.^{[8][1][10][11]}

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the verb to the 13th century.^[2][3] In the cantigas it means to hurl a lance, an arrow or any object, and also to lay something to someone's charge; the phrase lançar a tavolado named a knightly game in which riders threw lances at a wooden stand.^[12][13] The Crónica Troiana already has the wider senses “to place, lay” (lançarõno en hun leyto “they laid him on a bed”) and, reflexively, “to throw oneself down” at someone's feet.^[13]

Semantic evolution

Houaiss notes that the verb, at first “to throw the lance”, widened its meaning (already in Vulgar Latin, according to Machado) to throwing any object, and so took over the senses of Latin iactō, drifting far from the weapon.^[2] Nascentes says the same: the verb generalised and replaced jactare.^[7] The early dictionaries gloss it with Latin iacio, “to throw”.^[14][15]

From throwing came casting out, pouring and giving off: Houaiss dates “to make sprout, put forth” (of plants), “to vomit” and “to pour out” to the 14th century.^[2] Morais (1813) lists laying foundations, shedding blood or tears, a sea casting up corpses, a tree putting out shoots and putting a book into circulation.^[16] The modern senses “to launch a product on the market”, “to release a film” and “to promote someone in a career” continue the last of these.^[2][17]

The verb passed into the creoles of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde as lansa.^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records of lançar and alançar.^[3]
• 14th century – Houaiss's first dates for the senses “to put forth (shoots)”, “to vomit” and “to pour out”.^[2]
• c. 1430 – lançar in the Horto do Esposo (witness 1390–1437), its first occurrence in the CTA corpus.^[18]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses lançar with Latin iacio.^[14]
• 1734 – Feijó prescribes the spelling lançar, not lansar.^[4]
• 1813 – Morais lists a long series of figurative senses, among them putting a book into circulation.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. To throw or hurl with force, usually at a target: O menino lançou a bola por cima do muro.^[2][5][1]
2. (reflexive) To throw oneself, to rush at or into something; to venture boldly on an undertaking: lançar-se ao trabalho.^[2][19]
3. To put forth, make sprout (of plants): A roseira já lança botões.^[2][5]
4. To launch: to start or set a fashion; to bring a new product onto the market; to release or premiere a book, film or show.^[2][17][1]
5. To promote someone, or oneself, in a career.^[2]
6. To bring into a discussion; to spread, sow (discord, confusion).^[2]
7. To utter forcefully (a cry, insults).^[2][5]
8. To give off, emit (smoke, light, sparks); to pour out, spill (a liquid).^[2][5]
9. To vomit.^[2][19]
10. (reflexive) To flow into another river or the sea.^[2][20]
11. To cast (a look, one's eyes); to write down, enter (in a book or an account); to make a bid at an auction.^[2][19]
12. To lay to someone's charge, impute.^[19][17]

Word family

• lançamento
• lance
• lançador

Related words

• lança
• lancear
• Latin lancea
• Galician lanzar

Usage notes

Common phrases are lançar mão de “to make use of”, lançar em rosto “to reproach”, lançar ferro “to drop anchor” and lançar luz sobre “to shed light on”.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. lançar
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. lançar
4. ^ a b Feijó, João de Morais Madureira (1734), Orthographia, ou Arte de escrever, e pronunciar com acerto a lingua portugueza, Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. lançar
5. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. lançar
6. ^ Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. lanzar
7. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. lançar
8. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. lancea
9. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. lancea
10. ^ Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. lanza
11. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 576
12. ^ 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. lançar
13. ^ a b 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. lançar
14. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. lançar
15. ^ 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. lançar
16. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 203
17. ^ a b c d Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 5569
18. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. lançar
19. ^ a b c d Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. lançar
20. ^ 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. lançar