namorar

Forms

namorar (first-person singular present namoro, first-person singular preterite namorei, past participle namorado)^[1]

Etymology

It is an aphaeretic form from Portuguese enamorar, with the first syllable dropped.^{[2][3][1][4][5]} The fuller verb is a parasynthetic formation from the preposition em, the noun for “love” and the verb ending -ar.^[4][6] That noun is from Latin amor.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb appears in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, intransitive or reflexive in the sense “to fall in love”: namorous' enton / dela “he then fell in love with her”, outra vez sse namorou “fell in love again”, and un cavaleiro fezo dela namorar “she made a knight fall in love with her”.^[8] The secular cantigas use it too: que namorei / na ermida do Soveral “whom I loved at the chapel of Soveral”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Barbosa (1611) and Pereira (1697) gloss the verb with Latin deperire “to be desperately in love with”.^[10][11] Bluteau distinguishes showing oneself a lover, courting with words, and courting a girl with the intention of marrying her, and records namorar-se de “to fall in love with”.^[12] Morais (1789) defines it as courting a lady and declaring one's love by looks and gestures, and adds the use with things that make us love them, namorou-me o seu gentil semblante.^[13]

The sense “to be in a relationship with, to date” grew from “to court”; the older Aulete notes that in northern Brazil the verb took com, está namorando com ela.^[14][1] Figuratively it means to look at something with longing, to covet it.^[14][5] In north-eastern Portugal (Trás-os-Montes, Barroso) dialect surveys record the sense “to have sex”.^[15] Hunsrik, the German dialect of southern Brazil, borrowed it as namoreere.^[1]

Cunha dates the derivatives namorado to the 14th century, namoramento to the 15th, namorador and namoradiço to the 16th, and the noun namoro to 1881.^[3]

Timeline

• 1200s – namorous’, sse namorou in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[8][2]
• 1300s – first record of namorado.^[3]
• 1611 – Barbosa glosses it with Latin deperire feminam amore.^[10]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau records courting with the intention of marriage and namorar-se de.^[12]
• 1789 – Morais defines it as courting a lady.^[13]
• 1881 – first record of the noun namoro.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To court, to woo: to try to win someone's love.^[2][1][16]
2. (transitive or intransitive) To flirt with.^[2]
3. To charm, captivate;^[2][17] (reflexive, with de) to fall in love with: Namorou-se daquela casa à beira-mar.^[2][17]
4. (transitive or with com) To be in a relationship with, to date: Namoram desde o liceu.^[1][14][5]
5. (transitive) To kiss and caress, as lovers do.^[1]
6. (figurative) To look longingly at, to covet: Há meses que namora aquela bicicleta.^[14][5][18]
7. (Trás-os-Montes) To have sex.^[15]

Word family

• namorado
• namorada
• namorador
• namoradiço
• namoradeira
• namoro

Related words

• enamorar
• amor

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. namorar
3. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. namorar
4. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. namorar
5. ^ a b c d 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. namorar
6. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. enamorar
7. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. amor
8. ^ a b 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. namorar
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. namorar
10. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. namorar
11. ^ Pereira, Bento (1697), Thesouro da lingoa portuguesa, in the 1697 edition of his Prosodia (1st ed. 1647; CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. namorar
12. ^ a b Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. namorar
13. ^ 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, 108
14. ^ a b c d 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. namorar
15. ^ a b 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. namorar
16. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. namorar
17. ^ 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. namorar
18. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. namorar