pascer

Forms

pascer (first-person singular present pasço, first-person singular preterite pasci, past participle pascido)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote pacer, paçer and pasçer.^[2][3] Cunha dates pacer to the 13th century and pascer to the 16th;^[4][5] Morais (1813) still refers pascer to pacer.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pāscō (“to feed, to pasture”), written Old Galician-Portuguese pacer in the oldest texts.^[3][4][6][1] Houaiss notes that in Latin the intransitive sense “to graze” was more often expressed by the deponent form pāscor.^[3]

The same Latin word is Galician pacer, Spanish pacer, Catalan péixer, French paître, Italian pascere and Romanian paște.^[7][8] Corominas notes that the Latin verb was inherited by all the Romance languages.^[9]

The Latin verb goes back to *pāskō, a form with the suffix ⟨-sk-⟩ of Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (“to protect, to herd”).^[10][1] De Vaan compares pahš- (“to protect”), and the same root is in pāstor (“shepherd”) and pābulum (“fodder”).^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

A legal text of 1188–1230 in the Portugaliae Monumenta Historica has both pacer and pascere in a Latin passage.^[2][3] In the vernacular the verb appears in the 13th-century cantigas d'escarnho: Afonso Eanes do Coton speaks of not letting a cow out to graze (non leixass' a pacer), and Fernan Soarez de Quinhones of a friar who put his newly bought beasts out to graze.^[2] The sense is the pastoral one, “to graze, to put animals to graze”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Barbosa (1611) renders the verb with the Latin pasco and pascor;^[11][12] Bluteau (1712) gives it as “to graze, to eat the grass of the field”, and also has it in an active sense, “to graze a meadow”.^[11][12] Poets used it figuratively: Morais quotes Camões for the eyes that “graze” on a sight, and pascer vãas esperanças “to feed on empty hopes”.^[13][4] The modern dictionaries keep three senses, “to graze”, “to feed (oneself)” and “to delight (the eyes)”;^[3][14][1] Wiktionary labels the verb archaic, and pastar is the everyday word.^[3][14][1]

Timeline

• 1188–1230 – pacer and pascere in a Latin legal text.^[2]
• 13th century – pacer in the cantigas d'escarnho.^[2][4]
• 14th century – the forms pascendo and pacer.^[3]
• 15th century – the spelling pasçer.^[3]
• 16th century – Cunha's first record of the spelling pascer, and of pascentar.^[4]
• 1611 – Barbosa gives pascer with the Latin pasco.^[11]
• 1712 – Bluteau gives the active sense “to graze a meadow”.^[12]
• 1789 – Morais records the figurative pascer os olhos.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive and intransitive) To graze, to eat grass in the field; to put animals out to graze: As ovelhas pasciam no prado.^[3][14][1]
2. (transitive, intransitive and reflexive) To feed, to nourish (oneself) on something.^[3][15][1]
3. (figurative) To delight, to give or take pleasure, especially of the eyes: pascer os olhos na paisagem.^[3][14][16]

Word family

• pascentar

Related words

• pastar
• pasto
• pastor
• apascentar
• Latin pāscō
• Spanish pacer

Usage notes

Aulete treats pascer as a defective verb, used only in the forms where the ⟨c⟩ is followed by ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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. pacer
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. pascer
4. ^ a b c d e f Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. pascer
5. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 404
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. pascer
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6263
8. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 383
9. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 331
10. ^ 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, p. s.v. pāscō
11. ^ a b c Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. pascer
12. ^ a b c Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. pascer
13. ^ a b 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, 164
14. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. pascer
15. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. pascer
16. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 6941
17. ^ 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. pascer