mar

Forms

mar m (plural mares)^[1] Houaiss records mar from the 13th century and a 15th-century ma.^[2] The Cantigas also have mare.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mare (“sea”), written Old Galician-Portuguese mar in the oldest texts.^[2][4][1][5]

The same Latin word is Galician mar, Spanish mar, Catalan mar, French mer, Italian mare and Romanian mare.^[6][1] The Latin noun was neuter: Portuguese, Spanish and Italian normally made it masculine, French, Catalan and Romanian feminine.^[2] Meyer-Lübke ascribes the feminine to the influence of terra (“land”), and Houaiss also finds the pairing of sea and land the best explanation.^[6][2] Portuguese once had the feminine too, and traces of it remain in the compounds baixa-mar and preamar.^[2][7] Spanish still uses both genders.^[8]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Italic *mari and PIE *móri.^[1] De Vaan reconstructs it as a word for any large body of water, a sea or a lake, with cognates in muir, mãrės, meri and marr; it seems to be restricted to the European languages.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A Latin charter of 1079 already has the Romance word in a place description, rriba de mar “on the shore of the sea”.^[10] In the 13th century the Cantigas de Santa Maria tell of a man who passou o mar e foi romeu a Jherusalen “crossed the sea and went as a pilgrim to Jerusalem”, and use alen mar “overseas” and o Gran Mar for the Atlantic.^[10] In the Cancioneiro da Ajuda coita do mar is seasickness, and de mar a mar means from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau (1712–1728) derived the word from a Hebrew marath “bitterness”, for the bitter taste of sea water.^[11] His book of synonyms lists poetic names for the sea such as Prata navegada “sailed silver” and Campo fluctuante “floating field”.^[11]

Beside the sea itself, modern Portuguese uses the word for sea water, sea bathing, the seaside and life at sea, for rough water raised by the wind, and figuratively for any great quantity or for an abyss.^[2][12] In astronomy it names the dark plains of the Moon.^[2][1] Aurélio records ponto as an old synonym.^[13]

Spanish borrowed the derivative marejada “swell” from Portuguese.^[14] Kabuverdianu has mar.^[1]

Timeline

• 1079 – rriba de mar in a Latin charter.^[10]
• 13th century – first vernacular records.^[2][4][10]
• 14th century – mar in the Trasladação de S. Nicolau.^[15]
• 1521 – first record of maresia “smell of the sea”.^[4]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists Mar roxo, the Red Sea.^[16]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau derives the word from Hebrew.^[11]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira defines the word with quotations from the chroniclers.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. The sea, the great mass of salt water that covers most of the earth; the ocean.^[2][13][1]
2. A sea, a part of the ocean more or less enclosed by land, or a great salt lake inland: o mar Mediterrâneo.^[2][13]
3. Sea water; sea bathing.^[2][18]
4. The seaside, the coast; life at sea.^[2][18]
5. Rough water raised by wind or storm.^[2][13]
6. (figurative) A great quantity: um mar de papéis.^[2][19][1]
7. (figurative) An abyss; immensity.^[12][18]
8. (astronomy) A mare, one of the dark plains on the surface of the Moon.^[2][1]

Word family

• marear
• mareado
• mareante
• maresia
• mareta
• amarar
• baixa-mar
• alto-mar

Related words

• maré
• mareiro
• marina
• marinha
• marinheiro
• marinho
• marítimo
• marujo
• Latin mare
• Galician mar

Usage notes

Mar alto or alto-mar is the open sea, out of sight of the coast.^[12][3] For the idea of “sea”, learned words use the prefixes hal(i/o)- and talass(i/o)-.^[2]

Houaiss also records a separate noun mar, the title the Maronites give their bishops, from Syriac mār “lord, saint”, first in 1603.^[2] Corriente calls it a modern word, from Syriac mār “my lord” through Syrian Arabic.^[20][21]

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. mar
3. ^ a b 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. mar
4. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. mar
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. mar
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5349
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 316
8. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 837
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. ^ a b c d e 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. mar
11. ^ 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. mar
12. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. mar
13. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. mar
14. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mar
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. mar
16. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. mar
17. ^ Vieira, Frei Domingos (1871–1874), Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da lingua portugueza, 5 vols., Porto: Ernesto Chardron e Bartholomeu H. de Moraes, p. 4, 127
18. ^ a b c 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. mar
19. ^ 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. mar
20. ^ 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. mar
21. ^ Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. 979