marido

Forms

marido m (plural maridos)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin marītus (“husband”), written Old Galician-Portuguese marido in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1]

The same Latin word is Galician marido, Spanish marido, Catalan marit, French mari and Italian marito.^[4][5] In Latin it was first an adjective of farming, “paired” (of a tree wedded to a vine), then poetic “nuptial”; as a noun it ousted vir (“man”) in the sense “husband”.^[6]

Cunha and Wiktionary connect the Latin noun with mās (“male”).^[3][1] De Vaan instead reconstructs Proto-Italic *marīto- (“having a young woman”), from Proto-Indo-European *mor-ih₂- (“young woman”), the source of Welsh morwyn (“girl, maiden”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Romance marido already stands in Latin charters of the 11th century: con suo marido “with her husband” in 1017 and 1050.^[8] Houaiss's first vernacular date is 1269, from Cunha's slips of medieval Portuguese.^[2] The Cantigas de Santa Maria tell of a poor woman a que morreu o marido “whose husband had died”.^[8]

Semantic evolution

In a cantiga d'escarnho the word is used mockingly for a man's male lover.^[9] Vieira (1871) quotes Garcia de Resende on wives whose husbands let them do as they please.^[10] In Brazil marido da professora is a jobless man living on his wife's public salary, and marido alone can be a man who depends on his wife and lets her take the decisions.^[2][11] The word passed into Kabuverdianu and Guinea-Bissau Creole as maridu.^[1]

Timeline

• 1017 – con suo marido in a Latin charter.^[8]
• 1269 – first vernacular record, according to Houaiss.^[2]
• 13th century – marido in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Crónica Troiana.^[8][3]
• 1416 – the earliest CTA text with the word, the Vida do Cativo Monge Confesso.^[12]
• 15th century – the spellings marjdo and marydos.^[2]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses it with Latin maritus and vir.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. husband, a man joined to a woman by marriage: O marido dela é engenheiro.^[2][14][1]
2. (Brazil, informal) A man who lives off his wife's income and leaves the decisions to her.^[2][11]

Word family

• maridar
• maridança

Related words

• marital
• Latin marītus
• Galician marido

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. marido
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. marido
4. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5363
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. maritus
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. mari
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ 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. marido
9. ^ 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. marido
10. ^ 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, 146
11. ^ a b 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. marido
12. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. marido
13. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. marido
14. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. marido