noventa

Forms

noventa m or f^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote nouéénta, nouaenta and noueeta;^[2][3] noventa is recorded from the 15th century.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *nōvāgintā, written Old Galician-Portuguese noveenta and Old Galician-Portuguese novaenta in the oldest texts.^[3][4][1] The Vulgar Latin form is an alteration of classical Latin nōnāgintā (“ninety”) under the influence of novem (“nine”).^[1][4][5] Nascentes adds that the next lower ten, oitenta, in which the vowel of the first syllable is clearly heard, helped to shape the new form.^[6]

The same Latin word is Galician noventa, Spanish noventa, Catalan novanta, Italian novanta and French nonante;^[7][1][8] Old Spanish also had novaenta, and Catalan noranta owes its -r- to coranta (“forty”).^[7][1][8]

The Latin numeral goes back to an earlier *nūnāgintā, Proto-Italic *nounāgəmtā, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁néwn̥dḱomt (“nine tens”); its Greek cognate is Ancient Greek ἐνενήκοντα (enenḗkonta).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cunha dates nouéénta and nouaenta to the 13th century.^[2] The 14th-century Crónica Troiana counts the years from the creation of the world to the birth of Christ as cinquo mill et çento et noueenta et noue años “five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine years”.^[9] Houaiss's first dated record is from 1365, spelt noveenta.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word has always been the cardinal number “ninety”.^[3][2] Bluteau (1712–1728) gives it with Latin equivalents and with phrases such as noventa vezes “ninety times” and velho de noventa annos “a man of ninety”.^[10] Modern dictionaries add the use as a noun for the figure 90 and for the ninetieth item of a series.^[3][11][12] The informal noventão “a man in his nineties” is formed from it.^[13]

Timeline

• 13th century – nouéénta and nouaenta.^[2]
• 14th century – noueenta in the Crónica Troiana.^[9]
• 1365 – noveenta, Houaiss's first dated record.^[3]
• 15th century – the modern spelling noventa.^[3]
• 1525 – noventa in the Memorial da Infanta Santa Joana.^[14]
• 1697 – Pereira's Thesouro glosses Noventa as Latin nonaginta.^[15]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau lists noventa vezes and velho de noventa annos.^[10]

Meanings

Numeral

1. ninety, eighty plus ten; the cardinal number after 89: Esperou noventa dias pela resposta.^[3][11][1]
2. ninetieth, in apposition, marking the ninetieth item of a series: a página noventa.^[3][11]

Noun

1. The number ninety and the figure 90 (Roman XC) that represents it.^[11][16][1]
2. The person or thing numbered ninety in a series.^[11][12]

Word family

• noventão

Related words

• nove
• nonagésimo
• nonagenário
• Latin nōnāgintā
• Galician noventa

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 Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. noventa
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. noventa
4. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. noventa
5. ^ 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. noventa
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 357
7. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. nonaginta
8. ^ a b Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. noventa
9. ^ 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. noueenta
10. ^ 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. noventa
11. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. noventa
12. ^ a b 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. noventa
13. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. noventão
14. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. noventa
15. ^ 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. noventa
16. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 6566