monção

Forms

monção f (plural monções)^[1] The 16th-century texts write both monção and the older moução (both from 1513), with monsão in 1553 and moção in 1664.^[2][3] Later spellings include monçaõ and mouçaõ.^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Arabic مَوْسِم (mawsim, “season, time of year fixed for something”), the word for the season of fairs, of the pilgrimage to Mecca, of the harvest and of sailing.^[2][3][4][1] Corriente traces the Portuguese word, taken up in the 16th century during the voyages to the East, to a dialect form with /a/ in the last syllable (mawsam) used on the coasts of the Indian Ocean, and Houaiss also allows for such a popular variant.^[5][2] The Arabic noun is derived from the verb for “to mark, fix”.^[6][7]

Houaiss, Aurélio and Nascentes take the word through the older form moução, whose /w/ later became nasal under the influence of the initial nasal.^[2][8][9] Corominas explains the ending -ão and the feminine gender by the influence of the Portuguese synonym estação.^[6] Yule, quoted by Dalgado, holds that Arab pilots passed the word to the Portuguese in its nautical sense, as Abd-el-Razzak already shows in 1444.^[10]

From Portuguese the word passed to Spanish monzón, first recorded in 1678, Catalan monsó, Italian monsone and French mousson, which starts from the old form with -ou-.^[6][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest Portuguese quotation in Dalgado's Glossário is from the letters of Afonso de Albuquerque, about the monsoon for sailing to the Moluccas (Daquy a Maluco he monção…), which Houaiss dates to 1513.^[10][2] The first sense was the season of the year suited to a particular voyage, as João de Barros explains in 1552: falamos por monções, que são os tempos em que lá navegam “we speak of monsoons, which are the seasons when they sail there”.^[10][6]

Semantic evolution

From the season favourable to a voyage the word came to mean the part of the year unfavourable to sailing and then the winds that blow in it;^[6] Corominas finds this newer sense already in Fernão Mendes Pinto (as primeiras bafugens da monção).^[6] Garcia da Orta in 1563 uses it for the season of a fruit (a monçam dellas [mangas]), close to the Arabic sense “season”, as the Conde de Ficalho remarked.^[10] Dalgado notes that in Indo-Portuguese it meant the rainy season, and that the old writers distinguished a long and a short sailing season, monção grande and monção pequena.^[10] Vieira (1871–1874) still defines it as a seamen's term for the season of the steady winds.^[11]

The figurative sense “opportunity, occasion” is found in Jacinto Freire and other authors of the 17th century, according to Dalgado.^[10][2] In Brazil the plural named the river expeditions between the captaincies of São Paulo and Mato Grosso in the 18th and 19th centuries.^[2][12]

Through Dutch monssoen the word gave the English word monsoon, recorded from the 1580s.^[7]

Timeline

• 1513 – first record, as monção and moução, in the letters of Afonso de Albuquerque.^[2][10]
• 1532 – esperando a moução “waiting for the monsoon” in a document printed by Biker.^[10]
• 1552 – João de Barros explains the word as the seasons in which ships sail.^[10]
• 1553 – the spelling monsão.^[2]
• 1563 – Garcia da Orta uses it for the season of mangoes.^[10]
• 1580s – the English word monsoon, through Dutch.^[7]
• 1664 – the spelling moção.^[2]
• 1678 – the Spanish form monción, in the Portuguese author Juan de Sá Meneses.^[6]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira defines it as a seamen's term.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A monsoon: a seasonal wind of South and Southeast Asia that blows landward in the hot season and seaward in the cold season.^[2][13][8]
2. The rainy season that comes with these winds in tropical and subtropical climates (often in the plural).^[14][1]
3. The time of year, or the wind, that is favourable for sailing.^[2][8][13]
4. (figurative) A favourable occasion, an opportunity: Esperou pela monção certa para falar.^[2][12][14]
5. (Brazil, history) Each of the river expeditions that kept the captaincies of São Paulo and Mato Grosso in contact in the 18th and 19th centuries.^[2][12][13]

Related words

• estação
• Spanish monzón
• French mousson

Usage notes

Dalgado also records a separate, obsolete masculine noun monção “raider of Malacca”, from Malay, in Castanheda's História (1552).^[10]

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 m n Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. monção
3. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. monção
4. ^ 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. monção
5. ^ a b Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. 396
6. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 133
7. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. monção
9. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. monção
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Dalgado, Sebastião Rodolfo (1919–1921), Glossário luso-asiático, 2 vols., Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, p. 2, 65
11. ^ a b 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, 299
12. ^ 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. monção
13. ^ a b c 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. monção
14. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. monção