merecer

Forms

merecer (first-person singular present mereço, first-person singular preterite mereci, past participle merecido)^[1] Houaiss records merecer, mereci and mereçia from the 13th century, and merescamos, mericy and merreçera from the 14th.^[2] The cantigas have both mereço and meresco for “I deserve”.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *merēscō, an inchoative verb formed on mereō (“to earn; to deserve”).^[5][6][7][1] Houaiss describes the Vulgar Latin verb as a frequentative of the classical one.^[2] The oldest texts already write Old Galician-Portuguese merecer.^[2][4]

The same Vulgar Latin verb is Spanish merecer, recorded in Spanish about 1140, Catalan merèixer and Logudorese Sardinian mereskere.^[8][9][10] Old French and Old Occitan kept the simple verb as Old French merir and Old Occitan merir, while Italian meritare and French mériter come from a frequentative meritō of the same Latin verb.^[8][10]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *merē- (“to earn”) and, with a question mark, a Proto-Indo-European *(s)mr-eh₁- (“to earn”); its cognates include Greek μείρομαι (meíromai, “to receive one's share”) and μέρος (méros, “part, share”).^[11] Wiktionary derives it from *(s)mer- (“to assign, allot”).^[1] The Latin verb's first sense was to receive something as one's wage or share, to earn.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the 13th-century Cantigas de Santa Maria the verb already means “to deserve”, of good and of bad alike: quen te soubesse / loar como mereces “whoever could praise you as you deserve”, and ca non mereci mal “for I deserved no harm”.^[4][2] In the cantigas d'amigo, merecer a alguem and mal merecer mean to do something that deserves punishment, to offend someone.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Barbosa's dictionary of 1611 notes that the Latin verbs it gives for merecer also meant to earn pay as a soldier.^[13] Morais (1813) gives the sense “to earn by one's work”, quoting os salários, e soldadas, que mereci “the wages and pay that I earned”.^[14] The modern language uses the verb mainly for being worthy of a reward or a punishment, and of things that deserve attention or a reply.^[2][15]

Regional Portuguese kept the sense of earning: in Portugal merecer can mean to pay for goods with one's labour, to work a day for someone who pays by the day, or to help a neighbour so as to be helped in turn.^[16][17]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, spelt merecer, mereci and mereçia.^[2][5]
• 14th century – the spelling merescamos, with ⟨sc⟩.^[2]
• c. 1430 – the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437) uses the verb.^[18]
• 1541 – a private letter writes mereçe.^[19]
• 1569 – Cardoso renders merecer by Latin mereor.^[20]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists the Latin phrases for “to deserve well” and “to deserve ill” of someone.^[13]
• 1813 – Morais adds the sense “to earn by one's work”.^[14]
• 1871 – Vieira derives the verb from Latin merere.^[21]
• 1951 – a regional survey in Portugal records mercer o dia “to earn the day's wage”.^[17]

Meanings

Verb

1. To deserve, to be worthy of something good or bad because of one's qualities or conduct: Ela merece o prémio que recebeu.^{[2][6][22][1]}
2. To be worth, to call for: Este livro merece uma segunda leitura.^[2][16]
3. To be fit to receive: Essas promessas não merecem confiança.^[2]
4. To earn, to be entitled to a payment: Trabalhou o mês inteiro e merece o salário.^[2][22]
5. (with de) To earn the gratitude of a country or a society by one's services.^[2] The phrase merecer bem de means “to render great service to”.^[2]
6. (intransitive) To make oneself deserving, to gain merit (merecimento).^[2][22]
7. (regional, Portugal) To pay for goods with one's labour; to work for a day's pay.^[16][17]

Word family

• merecedor
• merecimento
• desmerecer
• desmerecedor
• imerecido

Related words

• mérito
• meretriz
• Latin mereō
• Spanish merecer

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 h i j k l m n Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. merecer
3. ^ 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. merecer
4. ^ 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. merecer
5. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. merecer
6. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. merecer
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. merecer
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5592
9. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. merecer
10. ^ 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. 327
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. mereō
13. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. merecer
14. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 291
15. ^ 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. merecer
16. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 6099
17. ^ a b c 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. merecer
18. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. merecer
19. ^ 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. merecer
20. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. merecer
21. ^ 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, 210
22. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. merecer