manco

Forms

manco (feminine manca, masculine plural mancos, feminine plural mancas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mancus (“maimed, having a useless hand”), written Old Galician-Portuguese manco in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1]

The same Latin word is Spanish manco, Catalan manc and Old French manc, while Italian monco “maimed” was crossed with truncus.^[4][5][6] From it come Italian mancare “to be lacking”, borrowed as French manquer, and the derivative French manchot.^[4][7]

The Latin adjective is usually linked with manus (“hand”): the OLD forms it from that noun with the suffix -cus, as in peccō beside pēs.^[8][3] De Vaan accepts the link only with a shift from “handy” to “having a defective hand”.^[9] Wiktionary reconstructs *mh₂n-ko- (“maimed in the hand”), and mentions another theory deriving it from *menk- (“to lack”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the word to the 13th century.^[2][3] In a cantiga d'escarnho of Pero Garcia d'Ambroa a man faz do manco que se non levante “pretends to be lame so as not to get up”, and the Cantigas de Santa Maria speak of curing çopos e mancos “the crippled and the lame”.^[10][11]

Semantic evolution

Latin mancus referred to a hand, but in Portuguese the commonest sense became “lame”, as Nascentes notes, while Spanish manco kept the sense of a missing arm or hand.^[12] Bluteau already defines manco as lame in one foot, and remarks that in good Latin mancus meant crippled in the hands.^[13] Morais widens it to anything incomplete: a verse short of a syllable, a history with a part missing, a language short of words, a boat short of oars or rowers.^[14][15] Later dictionaries add “slow-witted” and “slow”, and Houaiss a piece of furniture that wobbles.^[2][16] The verb mancar is recorded from the 14th century and manquejar “to limp” from the 16th.^[3]

Timeline

• 1200s – first records, according to Houaiss and Cunha.^[2][3]
• 1300s – first record of the verb mancar.^[3]
• 1400s – the feminine spelt mamqua; first record of manqueira “lameness”.^[2][3]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses manco with Latin mancus.^[17]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau defines manco as “lame in one foot” and records verso manco.^[13]
• 1789 – Morais lists manco de huma mão and manco de hum pé, and the transferred senses.^[14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. lame; walking unevenly, putting more weight on one side; coxo: Ficou manco depois da queda.^[2][1][16]
2. Lacking a limb or part of one, or unable to use it; maimed.^[2][18]
3. Of furniture or an object: unsteady, out of true, or missing a part.^[2][19]
4. (figurative) Defective, imperfect, incomplete: uma rima manca.^[2][16]
5. (figurative) Slow-witted, dull.^[2][18]
6. (figurative) Slow, sluggish.^[2][18]

Noun

1. A lame or maimed person.^[2][18]
2. (nautical) A curved timber fitted into the frame of a wooden boat.^[18][19]

Word family

• mancar
• manquejar
• manqueira
• mancada

Related words

• Latin mancus
• Spanish manco

Usage notes

Spanish manco means “one-armed” or “one-handed”, while the usual Portuguese sense is “lame”.^[12][5] In Brazil the word is also used of an animal with a defective leg that treads unevenly.^[20][21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. manco
3. ^ a b c d e f g Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. manco
4. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5305
5. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 797
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. manchot
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ 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. manco
11. ^ 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. manco
12. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 313
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. manco
14. ^ 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, 50
15. ^ Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 256
16. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. manco
17. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. manco
18. ^ a b c d e 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. manco
19. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. manco
20. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. manco
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. manco