pé

Forms

pé m (plural pés)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote pee and pe, plural pees and péés.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pedem (“foot”), the accusative of the Latin noun, written Old Galician-Portuguese pee in the oldest texts.^[1][2][3]

The same Latin word is Galician pé, Spanish pie, Catalan peu, French pied and Italian piede.^[5][1]

The Latin noun goes back to Proto-Italic *pets and Proto-Indo-European *pṓds (“foot”), the source also of Sanskrit पद् (pád), Ancient Greek πούς (poús) and foot.^[1][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A document of 1228 has firir da barba ata los pees “to strike from the beard down to the feet”.^[4] In the 13th-century cantigas d'escarnho Alfonso X writes of men thrown from their saddles ant' os pees de seu senhor “before their lord's feet”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Already in the Middle Ages the word was used for the foot of an animal (a hoof), the leg of a piece of furniture, the foot of a mountain (ao pee do Muradal), the base of a tower, and a plant or its stem;^[4] omes de pee were foot soldiers.^[4] Folqman (1755) lists pé for a tree trunk, the foot of a hill, a gust of wind (hum pé de vento) and the dregs of a liquid.^[7] Houaiss dates the sense “riser of a step” to 1899.^[2][8]

The word is the base of many set phrases: a pé “on foot”, em pé “standing”, ao pé da letra “literally”, meter os pés pelas mãos “to make a mess of things”.^[1]

Timeline

• 1228 – pees in a document.^[4]
• 13th century – pe, pees and péés in the cantigas and the chronicles.^[2][4]
• 1416 – the spelling pee in the earliest CTA text with it, the Vida do Cativo Monge Confesso.^[9]
• 16th century – first records of apear and espezinhar.^[3]
• 1755 – Folqman lists pé de vento “gust of wind”.^[7]
• 1899 – the sense “riser of a step”.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (anatomy) The foot, the end of the leg below the ankle, on which a person stands and walks: Doem-me os pés.^[2][10][1]
2. (zoology) The foot or paw of an animal.^[2][11][1]
3. The part of an object it rests on: the leg of a table or chair, the base of a glass.^[8][12][1]
4. The foot or lower part of something: of a mountain, of a page, of a bed.^[13][12][1]
5. A single plant: um pé de tomate.^[8][1]
6. A unit of length: the old Portuguese foot of about 33 cm, or the English foot of 30.48 cm.^[11][8][1]
7. (construction) The riser of a step.^[2][1]
8. Dregs, sediment; grape pomace.^[12][1]
9. (figurative) Footing, standing; a pretext: estar em pé de igualdade.^[8][1]

Word family

• apear
• espezinhar
• contrapé
• pontapé
• pezinho
• pé-de-cabra
• pé-de-galinha
• pé-de-meia
• pé-direito

Related words

• bípede
• centopeia
• peão
• pedal
• pedestal
• Latin pēs
• Galician pé
• Spanish pie

Usage notes

The phrase ao pé de “beside” has parallels in the old dialects of northern Italy, a pe de.^[5] In Paraíba pé is also bad luck.^[14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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. pé
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. pé
4. ^ 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. pee
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6439
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. pēs
7. ^ a b Folqman, Carlos (1755), Diccionario portuguez, e latino, Lisboa: Régia Officina Silviana (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. pé
8. ^ a b c d e 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. pé
9. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. pee
10. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. pé
11. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 6990
12. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. pé
13. ^ 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. pé
14. ^ Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. pé