paul

Forms

paul m (plural pauis)^[1] The 15th-century texts write paules, pauees, pauus, paull and apauhes.^[2] The plural is pauis, with the stress on the u.^[3][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin padūlis, a form with metathesis of Latin palūs (“fen, swamp”).^[1][2][4] Houaiss suggests that the metathesis came from the influence of the name of the river Padus, the Po.^[2] Cunha calls it the popular form beside the learned palude.^[5][1] The metathesised form is very frequent in the Latin documents of the whole Iberian Peninsula: the DCECH gives a charter of the early 9th century with its plural, and Lorenzo's chronology has the plural in a Portuguese charter of 882.^[6][7] Wiktionary adds that the earliest of these records is a forgery of about 800 based on an older document.^[1]

The metathesised form is also Spanish paúl, Sardinian paule and Italian padule (Tuscan), and Romanian pădure has the sense “forest”; the classical form lives on in Italian palude, Old French palu and Old Occitan palu.^[8][1]

De Vaan reconstructs *palūd- and compares Sanskrit पल्वल (palvala, “pond, pool”) and the Baltic words for “marsh”, such as Lithuanian pelkė.^[9][1] A link with Latin pall- “grey, pale” has been proposed, but de Vaan, following Schrijver, finds the step from “grey” to “swamp” unconvincing.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Before the vernacular records the word is found in Latin charters as the plural padulibus, cum pascuis, padulibus, montes, fontes “with pastures, marshes, hills, springs” (882), and again in 960.^[7] Lorenzo's chronology quotes 1124 as Machado's date for paul.^[7] Houaiss and Cunha date the Portuguese noun to the 13th century, with the sense “swamp, marsh”.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

The sense has hardly changed: the CTA's first prose record is the Livro das tres vertudes of after 1450, Cardoso in 1569 glosses paul with Latin uligo “marshy ground”, and Morais in 1789 defines it as land soaked with water, a bog.^[10][11][12] Silva Bastos in 1912 adds a pool of stagnant water.^[13] The word is mainly European: the TLPGP records it from a survey of Portugal, and the dictionaries give pântano as its common equivalent.^[14][2][15]

Timeline

• 882 – padulibus “marshes” in a Latin charter.^[7]
• 1124 – Machado's first date for paul, as Lorenzo quotes it.^[7]
• 1200s – the Portuguese noun paul.^[2][5]
• 1400s – the spellings paules, pauees and paull.^[2]
• after 1450 – paul in the Livro das tres vertudes.^[10]
• 1569 – Cardoso's dictionary lists paul.^[11]
• 1789 – Morais defines it as waterlogged land.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. (geography) A swamp or marsh; low, waterlogged ground with stagnant water: Drenaram o paul para fazer arrozais.^{[2][15][16][1]}
2. A pool of stagnant water.^[13][17]

Related words

• palude
• pântano
• Latin palus
• Spanish paúl

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 g h Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. paul
3. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. paul
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. paul
5. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. paul
6. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 436
7. ^ a b c d e 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. paul
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6183
9. ^ 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. palūs
10. ^ a b Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. paul
11. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. paul
12. ^ 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, 172
13. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. paul
14. ^ 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. paul
15. ^ 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. paul
16. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. paul
17. ^ 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. paul