noz

Forms

noz f (plural nozes)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote noze and noce;^[1] Wiktionary also lists the variants anoz, noç and nuace.^[1] The Portuguese dialect form anoz is recorded in the TLPGP.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin nux (“nut”), through a Vulgar Latin form with an open /ɔ/, *nŏce, written Old Galician-Portuguese noze and Old Galician-Portuguese noce in the old language.^[3][1][4] Nascentes calls the change of the Latin /u/ unexplained, and Wiktionary also finds the reasons for this early lowering unclear.^[5][1] Corominas suggests that the variant may owe its vowel to a Celtic word for the nut.^[6]

The same Latin word is Galician noz, Spanish nuez, Catalan nou, Occitan notz, French noix, Italian noce and Romanian nucă.^[7][1]

The Latin noun goes back to *knuks, and its cognates are Celtic and Germanic: Old Irish cnú, Old Norse hnot and Old English hnutu.^[8][1] Wiktionary connects the Germanic words with Proto-Germanic *hnuts, the source of nut.^[1] Because the word is found only in Italic, Celtic and Germanic, has different suffixes in each, and belongs to the vocabulary of trees and fruits, de Vaan concludes that it was borrowed from a non-Indo-European language.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Cantigas de Santa Maria the nut is already the measure of something worthless: que te non cost'hũa noz “that it should not cost you a nut”, Sol duas nozes non vales “you are not worth even two nuts”.^[9] Cunha dates the word to the 13th century, Houaiss to the 14th, from Cunha's medieval index.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

From the walnut the word spread to other hard-shelled fruits: Houaiss and Aurélio define it in botany as any dry, indehiscent fruit with a single seed, such as that of the palms.^[4][10] In the chronicles of the East it named the nutmeg: Dalgado quotes João de Barros (1552) listing canella, crauo, maça, noz among the spices, and Castanheda describing the noz que chamamos mozcada.^[11] Folqman's dictionary of 1755 has Nos moscada, and Morais (1813) distinguishes several kinds of walnut.^[12][13]

Transferred senses name things shaped like a nut: the thickened part of the anchor through which the stock passes, the frog of a violin bow, and in older usage the catch on which the string of a crossbow was held.^[4][14] Silva Bastos records the slang sense “head”, which Houaiss and Priberam still give as informal.^[15][4][14] A small lump of something, such as butter, is also a noz.^[14][16]

Timeline

• 13th century – the Cantigas de Santa Maria use noz for something of no value.^[9][3]
• 1496 – noz in the Regimento proveitoso contra a pestenença.^[17]
• 1552 – João de Barros names noz among the spices of the East.^[11]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses Noz with Latin nux.^[18]
• 1600s – first record of the derivative nogada.^[3]
• 1755 – Folqman lists Nos moscada, the nutmeg.^[12]
• 1813 – Morais describes the walnut and its kinds.^[13]
• 1912 – Silva Bastos records the slang sense “head”.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. The walnut, the fruit of the nogueira.^[4][10][1]
2. (botany) Any dry, indehiscent fruit with a single seed; a nut in general.^[4][10][19]
3. (nautical) The thickened part of an anchor through which the stock passes.^[4][10]
4. (music) The frog of a bow, where the hair is fixed.^[4]
5. A small lump of a soft food, about the size of a walnut: uma noz de manteiga.^[14][16]
6. (informal) The head.^[4][14]
7. (colloquial, usually in the plural) A testicle.^[1]

Word family

• nogada
• nogado
• quebra-nozes
• noz-moscada

Related words

• nogueira
• nuclear
• núcleo
• Latin nux
• Galician noz
• Spanish nuez

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. noz
3. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. noz
4. ^ 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. noz
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. noz
6. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. nuez
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6009
8. ^ 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
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. noz
10. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. noz
11. ^ a b Dalgado, Sebastião Rodolfo (1919–1921), Glossário luso-asiático, 2 vols., Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, p. 2, 114
12. ^ a b Folqman, Carlos (1755), Diccionario portuguez, e latino, Lisboa: Régia Officina Silviana (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. noz
13. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 350
14. ^ a b c d e Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. noz
15. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. noz
16. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 6568
17. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. noz
18. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. noz
19. ^ 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. noz