metade

Forms

metade f (plural metades)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote meiadade, meadade, meyadade, meiiatade, meyatade, meatade and meetade beside metade.^[2][3] Wiktionary also lists the variant ametade.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin medietās (“the middle; half”), a mainly Late Latin noun formed from medius (“middle; half”) with the suffix -tās.^[2][1] The oldest texts have the popular form Old Galician-Portuguese meiadade, later remade as Old Galician-Portuguese meetade and finally Old Galician-Portuguese metade, which displaced it.^[2][4][1]

The same Latin word is Galician metade, Spanish mitad, Catalan meitat, French moitié and Italian metà.^[5][1][6] Its base goes back to Proto-Italic *meðios, from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos (“between”), the source also of Ancient Greek μέσος (mésos) and Gothic 𐌼𐌹𐌳𐌾𐌹𐍃 (midjis).^[1][7]

Nascentes explains the oldest form as the direct outcome of the Latin word, with the loss of the /d/ and a change of the unstressed /e/ to /a/; where the /d/ and the second vowel were lost together, Old Galician-Portuguese meitade arose, and its diphthong kept the /t/ from being voiced, whence the form with ⟨ee⟩.^[8] Houaiss reports Machado's view that the unvoiced /t/ is a semi-learned treatment, owed to the word's frequent use in notarial deeds.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss's first record is metad in 1152, taken from Machado; the DDGM also dates metade to 1152 in Portuguese documents, and lists Latinate spellings such as mediedate (897), mediatate (978) and mediadade (1017) in documents of the 9th to 11th centuries.^[2][3] The sense in these deeds is already “one of two equal shares”, as later in a Galician notarial book that leaves a metade para o señor da terra e a outra metade “one half to the lord of the land and the other half” to the other party.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In the medieval texts the word names one of two equal parts of anything, often of land, rents or crops, and the Miragres de Santiago use it for half of a body.^[3] Morais (1789) defines it as a portion equal to the other when a whole is split in two, and records na metade do dia “at midday”, the sense “middle point”.^[9] Silva Bastos (1912) adds the popular sense “wife”, today mostly in the compound cara-metade.^[10][2] Houaiss and Michaelis record technical uses: in law, metade disponível, the share of property a spouse may freely bequeath, and in Brazilian ethnology, metade tribal, the dual division of many tribes, usually exogamous.^[2][11]

Timeline

• 897 – mediedate in a document from Portugal;^[3] mediatate follows in 978 and mediadade in 1017.^[3]
• 1152 – metad in a document quoted by Machado, which Houaiss gives as his first date;^[2][3] Lorenzo dates metade in documents from Portugal from the same year.^[2][3]
• 1209 – meyatade and meetade in Portuguese documents.^[3]
• 1255 – meiadade.^[2]
• c. 1400 – metade in the Compostela fragment of the Flos Sanctorum (witness 1380–1425).^[12]
• 1446 – first record of metade in Galician texts.^[3]
• 1789 – Morais records na metade do dia “at midday”.^[9]
• 1912 – Silva Bastos records the popular sense “wife”.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. half: either of the two equal parts into which a whole is divided: a metade de dez é cinco.^[2][13][1]
2. Either of two roughly equal parts of something, material or not.^[2][11]
3. The middle: the point halfway between two ends, or the moment halfway between a beginning and an end.^[2][14][1]
4. (informal) A spouse, especially a wife, in relation to the other partner; cara-metade.^[2][15][16]
5. (law) metade disponível: the part of a spouse's property that may be freely left by will or given away.^[2][13]

Word family

• cara-metade

Related words

• meio
• Latin medietas
• Galician metade
• Spanish mitad

Usage notes

Fazer as coisas pela metade means to leave things unfinished, or to compromise.^[2][17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. metade
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. metade
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. metade
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5461
6. ^ Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. metade
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. medius
8. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 329
9. ^ 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, 78
10. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. metade
11. ^ a b 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. metade
12. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. metade
13. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. metade
14. ^ 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. metade
15. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. metade
16. ^ 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. metade
17. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 6122