negro

Forms

negro (feminine negra, masculine plural negros, feminine plural negras, comparable, comparative mais negro, superlative o mais negro or negríssimo, diminutive negrinho, augmentative negrão)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin niger (“black, dark”), written Old Galician-Portuguese negro in the oldest texts.^[2][3][4][1]

The same Latin word is Spanish negro, Catalan negre, French noir, Italian nero and Romanian negru; the REW notes that Italian negro and French nègre “Black person” were taken from Spanish and Portuguese.^[5][1]

De Vaan finds no etymology for the Latin adjective.^[6] Wiktionary mentions a possible link with Proto-Indo-European *negʷ- (“bare, naked”), if that root is also the source of the word for “night”, and a possible Umbrian cognate.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

A Latin charter of 989 in the Portugaliae Monumenta Historica already has in pelagu negro “in the black pool”, with the Romance form of the adjective.^[7] In Galician-Portuguese the word appears in the 13th century: the Cantigas de Santa Maria compare black things to coal, mulberries and pitch (negro come carvon), and Alfonso X speaks of a alacran negro “black scorpion”.^[7]

Semantic evolution

In the cantigas the adjective already had figurative senses, “hard, grievous” and “grave, deadly” (meus negros pecados “my black sins”), and the emphatic construction a negra da verdade “the bitter truth”.^[8][7] Houaiss dates the noun for the colour to the 15th century, and Lorenzo's chronology records the noun in 1460; the General Estoria already has negros for the people of a city.^[2][7]

During the first decades of Portuguese Brazil the word was used for the native Tupi, not Africans; according to Capistrano de Abreu, quoted by Friederici, the name began to fall out of use after the Jesuits arrived in 1549 and called the Indians Brasis.^[9] Bluteau treats the noun mainly as the colour and its pigments, and Morais in 1813 gives both “black colour” and “black man”.^[10][11] The word passed into Papiamentu as negru.^[1]

Timeline

• 989 – a Latin charter writes in pelagu negro.^[7]
• 13th century, second half – the adjective in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the cantigas d'escarnho.^[7]
• c. 1430 – the word in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[12]
• 1460 – first record of the noun in Lorenzo's chronology.^[7]
• 1542 – negro in a private letter.^[13]
• 1549 – the Jesuits arrive in Brazil; after that the Indians are less often called negros.^[9]
• 1813 – Morais gives the noun the senses “black colour” and “black man”.^[11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. black, of the darkest colour; dark.^{[2][14][15][1]}
2. Of Black people; dark-skinned.^{[2][14][15][1]}
3. Dirty, grimy; bruised.^[14][15]
4. (literary) gloomy, sad, ill-fated: negros pensamentos.^[14][15][1]
5. Suspect, shady; done to harm others.^[15]
6. (optics) Absorbing all the visible light that falls on it: buraco negro, a black hole.^[2]

Noun

1. The colour black; a black pigment.^[2][15][1]
2. A Black person.^[2][15][1]
3. (Brazil, informal) A person; a familiar, affectionate or ironic term of address.^[15]

Word family

• negrume
• negrura
• negreiro
• enegrecer
• negrejar

Related words

• negritude
• nigro-
• denegrir
• Latin niger
• Spanish negro

Usage notes

Wiktionary describes the adjective as somewhat formal beside preto and the noun as possibly offensive.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. negro
3. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. negro
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. negro
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5917
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b c d e f g 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. negro
8. ^ 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. negro
9. ^ a b Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter, p. 446
10. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. negro
11. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 340
12. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. negro
13. ^ 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. negro
14. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. negro
15. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. negro