nau

Forms

nau f (plural naus)^[1] Old texts also write nao, and the 15th century naao and naão.^[2][3][4] Wiktionary lists nao as an alternative form.^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Catalan nau (“ship”), from Latin nāvis (“ship”).^[2][3][5][1] Houaiss dates the Catalan word to the 13th century.^[2] Aurélio and the Porto dictionary also give Latin as the ultimate source with Catalan as the route, and the DLP and Silva Bastos name only the Latin word.^[6][7][8][9]

Spanish nao was taken from Catalan as well, about 1260, beside the inherited Spanish nave.^[10][11][12] The same Latin word is Old Occitan nau, French nef and Italian nave.^[12][1] Portuguese itself has the doublet nave, straight from the Latin word.^[1]

The Latin noun goes back to Proto-Italic *nāwis and Proto-Indo-European *néh₂us (“ship”), and is cognate with Ancient Greek ναῦς (naûs, “ship”) and Sanskrit नौ (nau, “ship”).^[1][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the first record to the 14th century, from Cunha's slips of medieval Portuguese, with the forms nau and naos in that century.^[2] The Galician-Portuguese Crónica Troiana already writes both naos and naus for warships: its heroes see moytos naos ẽno mar “many ships on the sea”, and castles are well furnished por las naus de armas “by the armed ships”.^[4][14]

Semantic evolution

Until the 15th century the word was a general name for large ships with raised castles at bow and stern, usually with one mast and a square sail; from the 17th century it named a large, heavily armed three-masted ship that fought in the line of battle.^[2] Aurélio notes that the ship began with a single mast and had three, all square-rigged, by the end of the 18th century.^[6] Set phrases named its uses: nau de guerra for the warship that protected sea trade, nau de linha for a ship of the line, and nau dos quintos for the ship that carried every year from colonial Brazil to Portugal the fifth of the gold and diamonds due to the crown.^[2]

In poetry and in a general sense the word can mean any ship, and in Portugal it also means the crew.^[2][7][6][9] In Brazilian folklore Nau Catarineta is a popular dance-drama, also called marujada or chegança, that acts out the Portuguese struggles at sea.^[15] Wiktionary lists the English word nau as a borrowing of the Portuguese one.^[1]

Timeline

• 14th century – first Portuguese records, as nau and naos.^[2]
• 15th century – the spellings naao and naão.^[2]
• 1500 – a private letter writes naos.^[16]
• 17th century – the word comes to name the three-masted ship of the line.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (history) A large medieval ship with castles (castelos) at bow and stern, usually with one mast and a square sail; the name for such ships until the 15th century.^[2][6][17]
2. (history) From the 17th century, a large three-masted warship with square sails and heavy guns, part of a line of battle.^[2][17]
3. (poetic) Any ship or vessel.^[2][6][18]
4. (Portugal) The crew of a ship.^[7][15]

Related words

• nave
• navio
• Latin nāvis
• Catalan nau
• Spanish nao

Usage notes

The proverb grande nau, grande tormenta “big ship, big storm” means that the higher the office, the heavier the responsibility.^[7] Aurélio and Michaelis also record nau- as a combining form “ship”, from Greek, as in naupatia “seasickness”.^[6][15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. nau
3. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. nau
4. ^ 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. nao
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. nau
6. ^ a b c d e f Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. nau
7. ^ a b c d Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 6442
8. ^ 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. nau
9. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. nau
10. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. nave
11. ^ Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. nao
12. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5863
13. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
14. ^ 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. nau
15. ^ a b c 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. nau
16. ^ 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. nau
17. ^ a b 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. nau
18. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. nau