louco

Forms

louco (feminine louca, masculine plural loucos, feminine plural loucas)^[1] Feijó (1734) warns against the spelling loico.^[2] A letter of 1622 writes locos.^[3]

Etymology

Its origin is obscure, as Houaiss, Cunha and the DLP say.^[4][5][6] Wiktionary takes it from the medieval Old Galician-Portuguese louco and, possibly, borrowed from Andalusian Arabic لَوَق (lawaq, “stupidity”), from Arabic لاق (lāq, “to soften”).^[1] Corriente and his co-authors trace it to a classical adjective meaning “stupid”.^[7] Corominas, writing on Spanish loco, starts from a type *laucu of uncertain origin, perhaps the Arabic feminine and plural forms of a word for “foolish”, and notes that the word belongs only to Spanish and Portuguese.^[8][9]

The word is also Galician louco;^[1][10] Wiktionary compares Sicilian loccu.^[1][10]

Among older proposals, Adolfo Coelho derived it from Latin alucu “owl”, comparing Italian allocco “owl; dolt”, and Diez had proposed a similar form;^[11] Nascentes asks how this would explain the -ou-.^[11] Muret derived it from the name Ancient Greek Γλαῦκος (Glaûkos), the Lycian leader in the Iliad who traded gold armour for bronze, and Carolina Michaëlis found this phonetically excellent but asked how the story could have become known in the Peninsula.^[11][12] Bluteau reported Aleixo Venegas's derivation from Latin locus (“place”), a man “empty” of sense, and called it extravagant.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word appears in the 13th-century cantigas: Afonso X reproaches someone who has undertaken “so mad a cause” (tan louca razon), and a cantiga d'amigo has trager louco “to drive mad”.^[12][4] In the Crónica Troiana a speaker is asked how he can be tan louco et tan sen rrecado “so mad and so heedless”.^[12] The medieval word meant both “mad” and “foolish”, and was used as a noun for a madman.^[14][15]

Semantic evolution

Barbosa (1611) renders it with Latin insanus, demens and furiosus, and lists loucura and loucamente.^[16] Morais (1789) gives “without sense or judgement”, then “rash, imprudent” and “merry, fond of laughing and joking”.^[17] Aulete adds “excessively merry” and the use for things that show madness, such as louca presunção in Camões.^[18] Modern dictionaries add “carried away by a passion” (louco por música) and “extraordinary, excessive”.^[19][20]

In northern Portugal it has been recorded of plants as “lush, vigorous” and of people as “radiant, pleased”.^[21] In Rio Grande do Sul it can mean simply “a guy”.^[1] In Brazil louco is also a shrub, Plumbago scandens, a shortening of erva-de-louco; its caustic sap was once applied to the necks of the mentally ill.^[22][19][23]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records in the cantigas, with louca and the derivative loucura.^[4][5][12]
• 1513 – louco in the Livro dos Mártires.^[24]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists louco, loucura and loucamente.^[16]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau discusses Venegas's etymology from Latin locus.^[13]
• 1734 – Feijó rejects the spelling loico.^[2]
• 1789 – Morais adds the senses “rash” and “merry”.^[17]

Meanings

Adjective

1. mad, insane: suffering from a mental disorder.^[4][19][1]
2. Acting or speaking without sense; reckless: Foste louco em sair com este tempo.^[4][20]
3. Strange, out of the ordinary: um olhar louco.^[4][20]
4. Beside oneself, out of control: O barulho dos vizinhos deixa-me louco.^[4][19]
5. Carried away by a passion, crazy about: louco por futebol.^[19][6]
6. Excessive, extraordinary: uma pressa louca.^[20][10][1]

Noun

1. A madman, a mad person; someone who behaves without sense.^[6][1]
2. (Rio Grande do Sul) A man, a guy.^[1]
3. (Brazil, botany) A climbing shrub, Plumbago scandens, with white flowers.^[19][23]

Word family

• loucura
• loucamente
• enlouquecer
• aloucado
• louquice

Related words

• tresloucado
• tresloucar
• doido
• Spanish loco
• Galician louco

Usage notes

Wiktionary records the proverb de médico e louco todos temos um pouco “we all have a bit of the doctor and of the madman”, and the phrases louco varrido and dar a louca.^[1] Louco is the general word;^[19][20] doido and maluco are its near-synonyms.^[19][20]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. louco
3. ^ 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. louco
4. ^ 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. louco
5. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. louco
6. ^ 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. louco
7. ^ Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. loco
8. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 683
9. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. loco
10. ^ a b c Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. louco
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), p. 304
12. ^ a b c d 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. louco
13. ^ a b Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. louco
14. ^ 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. louco
15. ^ 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. louco2
16. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. louco
17. ^ a b 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. 2, 33
18. ^ Aulete, Francisco Júlio Caldas, Dicionário contemporâneo da língua portuguesa (1st ed. 1881), online as Aulete Digital, Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, https://aulete.com.br, p. s.v. louco
19. ^ a b c d e f g h Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. louco
20. ^ a b c d e f Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. louco
21. ^ 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. louco
22. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. louco
23. ^ a b Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. louco
24. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. louco