muro

Forms

muro m (plural muros)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mūrus (“wall, city wall”), written Old Galician-Portuguese muro in the oldest texts.^[2][3][4][1] The Galician-Portuguese word kept the Latin sense of a defensive wall, as in Spanish.^[5][6]

The same Latin word is Galician muro, Spanish muro, Catalan mur, French mur, Italian muro and Romanian mur.^[7][1]

Old Latin wrote moerus, from *moiros; the word is related to moenia (“city walls”) and to pōmērium, the strip of land behind the walls.^[8][9] De Vaan reconstructs a Proto-Indo-European *(H)moi-ro- (“building”), and Wiktionary derives it from *mey- (“to fix, to build fortifications”).^[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the first vernacular record to 1269; a Latin text written in Portugal already has the word in 960, and other Romance records follow in 1275 and 1298.^[2][5] In the Cantigas de Santa Maria a besieged town has nen torre nen barvacãa nen muro “neither tower nor barbican nor wall”, and the Crónica Geral speaks of o muro da vila, the town wall.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The medieval word was mostly the wall of a town or castle.^[5] Bluteau still defines it as a work of stone and lime that encloses towns and cities for their defence, and Morais (1789) as a wall that encloses and defends a city, a square or a farm.^[10][11] Today any wall that encloses or divides ground is a muro, and the figurative sense “defence, protection” is old.^[2][3] For a great city wall the borrowing muralha, from Italian, has been used since the 17th century.^[12]

Brazil and parts of Portugal use the word for an enclosure where beehives are kept, and in Ceará it means the back garden of a house.^[2][13][14] The Brazilian idiom ficar em cima do muro “to stay on top of the wall” means to avoid taking sides.^[2][15]

Timeline

• 960 – the word appears in a Latin text written in Portugal.^[5]
• 1269 – first record in a Portuguese text.^[2]
• 13th century – the Cantigas de Santa Maria use muro for the wall of a town.^[5][3]
• c. 1400 – muro in a fragment of the Flos Sanctorum (witness 1380–1425).^[16]
• 15th century – the spelling murros.^[2]
• 1569 – Cardoso renders muro by Latin murus.^[17]
• 1789 – Morais records herva do muro, a wall plant.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A wall, usually of stone or brick, that encloses an area or separates one property from another: Os vizinhos levantaram um muro entre os quintais.^[2][18][1]
2. The wall of a fortified town, a rampart (muralha); usually in the plural.^[2][19]
3. The outer wall of a building.^[2]
4. Anything that serves as a divide between spaces.^[2]
5. (figurative) A defence or protection.^[2][18]
6. (Brazil) An enclosure for beehives.^[2][18]
7. (Ceará) The back garden of a house (quintal).^[2][13]

Word family

• murar
• murada
• amura

Related words

• muralha
• mural
• Latin mūrus
• Spanish muro

Usage notes

Muro das Lamentações is the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and muro de arrimo a retaining wall.^[2][18]

A separate regional muro “rat” is recorded in Trás-os-Montes; the DLP derives it from Spanish mur, from Latin mus.^[20][19] The same old word mur “rat” is behind the verb murar “to hunt rats”.^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. muro
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. muro
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. muro
5. ^ a b c d e f 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. muro
6. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 193
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5764
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. mūrus
9. ^ a b 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. mūrus
10. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. muro
11. ^ 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, 105
12. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. muralha
13. ^ a b Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. muro
14. ^ 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. muro
15. ^ 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. muro
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. muro
17. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. muro
18. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. muro
19. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. muro
20. ^ 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. muro
21. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. murar