padre

Forms

padre m (plural padres)^[1] Houaiss records the 15th-century spellings paadre and padrre.^[2] The abbreviation is Pe.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pater (“father”), from its accusative form, written Old Galician-Portuguese padre in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1] The everyday word for “father”, pai, is a doublet, a familiar form of the same Latin word.^[1][4]

The same Latin word is Galician padre, Spanish padre, Catalan pare, Occitan paire, French père and Italian padre.^[4]

The Latin noun continues *patēr and Proto-Indo-European *ph₂tḗr (“father”), the source also of Ancient Greek πατήρ (patḗr).^[5][1][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the 13th century padre still meant “father”: in a satirical cantiga of Afonso X someone non erda de seu padre o viço “does not inherit his father's vigour”, and the Cantigas de Santa Maria have Adan, nosso padre “Adam, our father” and Deus Padre “God the Father”.^[7] Houaiss dates both “father” and “priest” to the 13th century.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In the Cancioneiro da Ajuda the word occurs only in the headings of two poems, beside the usual pai.^[7] The Cantigas de Santa Maria already call the Pope Padre Santo and the Church Fathers Santos Padres.^[7] Nascentes notes that the sense “father” went out of use after the 15th and 16th centuries, surviving in set phrases of the Church such as padre-nosso, Deus Padre and Padre Eterno, while the word became the title of priests;^[8][9] Camões still uses the old sense.^[8][9] Morais (1789) still lists “father” first, then the Fathers of the Church, the Pope and “secular or regular priest”.^[10]

In Brazil the priest is also a character of the bumba meu boi folk play, and in Rio Grande do Sul the word names a bird, the wood stork.^[2][11] From Portuguese the word passed into Konkani, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Malay and Persian.^[1] English padre (1580s) comes from Italian, Spanish or Portuguese.^[12]

Timeline

• 13th century – padre “father” in Afonso X's satirical cantigas and in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[7][2]
• 14th century – the Trasladação de S. Nicolau uses the word.^[13]
• 15th century – the spellings paadre and padrre for “father”.^[2]
• 1544 – the word in a private letter.^[14]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses padre only with the Latin pater.^[15]
• 1580s – English borrows padre from Italian, Spanish or Portuguese.^[12]
• 1697 – Pereira gives both pater and sacerdos.^[16]
• 1789 – Morais lists “father”, the Pope and “priest”.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A priest, a man ordained to the priesthood, secular or regular: O padre celebrou a missa das dez.^[2][11][1]
2. father, as a form of address or title for a priest.^[1]
3. Padre God the Father, the first person of the Trindade.^[17][18]
4. (archaic) A father.^[2][1]
5. (Brazil, folklore) The priest character of the bumba meu boi, who marries Mateus and Catirina.^[11][19]
6. (Rio Grande do Sul) The wood stork (Mycteria americana), also called cabeça-seca.^[2]

Word family

• padre-nosso
• padreco
• padre-mestre

Related words

• madre
• pai
• paterno
• Latin pater
• Spanish padre

Usage notes

Fixed phrases keep the old sense: Santo Padre or Padre Santo for the Pope, Padres da Igreja for the Church Fathers, Padre Eterno for God.^[2][10] In popular Brazilian speech casar no padre is to marry in church.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. padre
3. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. pai
4. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6289
5. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. pater
7. ^ a b c d 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. padre
8. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. padre
9. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 372
10. ^ a b c 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, 146
11. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. padre
12. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
13. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. padre
14. ^ 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. padre
15. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. padre
16. ^ 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. padre
17. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. padre
18. ^ 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. padre
19. ^ 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. padre