onze

Forms

onze m or f^[1] Medieval texts also write honze (1365), onçe, honse and õze.^[2][3] omze appears in the 15th century.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin ūndecim (“eleven”), written Old Galician-Portuguese onze in the oldest texts.^[2][4][1][3] Houaiss takes it from a spoken *undece that replaced the classical form, and Nascentes and Aurélio set out the steps from it through *undce to *unce.^[2][5][6]

The same Latin word is Galician once, Spanish once, Catalan onze, Occitan onze, French onze and Italian undici.^[7][1][8]

The OLD analyses the Latin numeral as ūnus (“one”) and decem (“ten”).^[9][1] Wiktionary gives an earlier *oinodecem, from *óynom déḱm̥t.^[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the first record to the 13th century.^[2] Lorenzo's chronology cites the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which speak of os Apostolos onze “the eleven Apostles”, and a charter of 1291 with onze dias “eleven days”.^[3] The Galician Crónica Troiana tells that someone leuou y onze naues de terra de çipres “took eleven ships from the land of Cyprus”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The numeral has kept its meaning; it is also used for the eleventh of a series (capítulo onze) and, as a noun, for the figure 11.^[2][10] In football o onze is a team of eleven players.^[2][11] Barbosa (1611) records onze em ordem for the ordinal, Latin undecimus.^[12] The old Aulete gives the popular phrase estar entre as dez e as onze “to be drunk; to be undecided”.^[10]

The compound onze-letras “go-between in love affairs” refers to the eleven letters of alcoviteira; in São Paulo it was shortened to onze.^[2][13][6] Cunha records the derivatives onzeno (14th century) and onzena, onzenar and onzeneiro (15th century).^[4]

Timeline

• 13th century – the Cantigas de Santa Maria have os Apostolos onze.^[3][2]
• 1291 – onze dias in a charter.^[3]
• 1365 – the spelling honze.^[2]
• c. 1400 – a Flos Sanctorum fragment (witness 1380–1425) uses onze.^[14]
• 15th century – the spelling omze.^[2]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses it with Latin undecim.^[15]
• 1611 – Barbosa records onze em ordem for the ordinal.^[12]
• 1789 – Morais defines it as one ten and one unit more.^[16]

Meanings

Numeral

1. eleven, ten plus one: Ficámos onze dias na aldeia.^[2][1]
2. (after a noun) Eleventh in a series: a página onze.^[2][10]

Noun

1. The number eleven, and the figure that represents it (11, XI).^[2][17]
2. (football) A team of eleven players, an eleven.^[2][11][1]
3. (Portugal) A mark of eleven, on a scale of twenty.^[17]
4. (São Paulo, informal, obsolete) A go-between in love affairs; short for onze-letras.^[2][6]

Word family

• onzena
• onzenar
• onzeneiro
• onzeno
• onze-letras

Related words

• undécimo
• Latin ūndecim
• Spanish once

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 n o p Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. onze
3. ^ 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. onze
4. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. onze
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. onze
6. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. onze
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9063
8. ^ 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. once
9. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. undecim
10. ^ a b c 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. onze
11. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. onze
12. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. onze
13. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. onze-letras
14. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. onze
15. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. onze
16. ^ Silva, António de Morais (1789), Diccionario da lingua portugueza composto pelo padre D. Rafael Bluteau, reformado, e accrescentado, 2 vols., Lisboa: Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, p. 2, 134
17. ^ 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. onze