olvidar

Forms

olvidar (first-person singular present olvido, first-person singular preterite olvidei, past participle olvidado)^[1] Houaiss records oluidou in the 14th century and olvydem and ulvidã in the 15th.^[2]

Etymology

According to Houaiss, Cunha and the DLP it is inherited from Vulgar Latin *oblītō (“to forget”), formed on oblītus, the past participle of oblīvīscor (“to forget”).^[2][3][4] Cunha gives the older Old Galician-Portuguese obridar of the 13th century as a form of the same verb.^[3] Nascentes explains both from an intermediate *oblidar: the older verb shows the normal change of /bl/ to /br/, while metathesis gave olbidar, which became the modern verb through the confusion of /b/ and /v/.^[5][6]

Wiktionary and the REW instead take it as borrowed from Spanish olvidar, which replaced the inherited form.^[1][7] Houaiss, for his part, treats the old verb itself as a borrowing of Old Occitan oblidar, or of the identical Catalan oblidar.^[8]

The same Vulgar Latin verb is French oublier and Romanian uita, and the Spanish verb is recorded from about 1140.^[7][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb olvidar is recorded from the 14th century, when Houaiss has the form oluidou “forgot”, from Cunha's index of medieval Portuguese.^[2][3] The troubadours of the 13th century still used obridar: Martim Soares has assi me ten end' amor obridado “so love keeps me forgotten by her”, and the Cantigas de Santa Maria say of the Virgin os que ama nunca os obrida “those she loves she never forgets”.^[10][11]

Semantic evolution

Houaiss marks obridar as archaic.^[8] Its nouns are as old as the verb: Cunha dates olvido, olvidança and olvidamento to the 14th century, and inolvidável to the 20th.^[3] Vieira in 1871–1874 gives it the extra sense “to stop loving”.^[12] Today Wiktionary labels it literary and poetic, and Priberam and Michaelis add the sense “to unlearn”.^[1][13][14] Schlee records it in the speech of Rio Grande do Sul, and a dialect survey recorded it for “to forget” at Lagoaça in Portugal.^[15][16]

Timeline

• 13th century – obridar in the cantigas.^[10][3]
• 14th century – first record of olvidar, in the form oluidou;^[2][3] olvido, olvidança and olvidamento in the same century.^[2][3]
• 15th century – the spellings olvidar, olvydem and ulvidã.^[2]
• 1711 – olvidara in a private letter.^[17]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira adds “to stop loving”.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, literary) To forget, to lose the memory of: olvidar as mágoas antigas.^[2][18][1]
2. (pronominal) To forget, not to remember: olvidar-se de um encontro.^[2][18]
3. (transitive) To unlearn, to lose a skill.^[13][14]

Word family

• inolvidável
• olvidamento
• olvido

Related words

• esquecer
• Latin oblīvīscor
• Spanish olvidar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. olvidar
3. ^ a b c d e f g Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. olvidar
4. ^ 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. olvidar
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. olvidar
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. 363
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. oblītāre
8. ^ a b Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. obridar
9. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. olvidar
10. ^ 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. obridar
11. ^ Lopes, Graça Videira; Ferreira, Manuel Pedro et al. (2011–), Cantigas Medievais Galego-Portuguesas [online database], Lisboa: Instituto de Estudos Medievais, FCSH/NOVA, https://cantigas.fcsh.unl.pt, p. s.v. obridar
12. ^ a b Vieira, Frei Domingos (1871–1874), Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da lingua portugueza, 5 vols., Porto: Ernesto Chardron e Bartholomeu H. de Moraes, p. 4, 548
13. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. olvidar
14. ^ 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. olvidar
15. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. olvidar
16. ^ 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. olvidar
17. ^ 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. olvidar
18. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. olvidar