pecar

Forms

pecar (first-person singular present peco, first-person singular preterite pequei, past participle pecado)^[1] Houaiss records pecar and pecque in the 13th century, péca and peccasse in the 14th and pecei in the 15th.^[2] Wiktionary lists the old spelling peccar.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin peccō (“to make a mistake, commit a fault”), written Old Galician-Portuguese pecar and Old Galician-Portuguese peccar in the oldest texts.^[2][3][4][1]

The same Latin verb is Galician pecar, Spanish pecar, Catalan pecar, French pécher and Italian peccare.^[5][1] Corominas holds that the Spanish verb, like all its Romance cognates, is semi-learned rather than truly inherited, since its stressed forms never diphthongise the /e/.^[6]

The Latin verb meant to blunder or to commit a fault, and Christian Latin specialised it for an offence against the law of God.^[7][8] Its origin is unclear: Walde–Hofmann and Ernout–Meillet linked it with pēs (“foot”), as if “faulty in the foot”; de Vaan objects that nothing in the meaning refers to feet, and mentions Leumann's connection with a root Proto-Indo-European *pet- (“to fall”).^[9] Wiktionary reconstructs Proto-Italic *petkāō, from *ped- (“to walk, fall, stumble”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb is in the Cantigas de Santa Maria: the seventh cantiga prays por que errar / non nos faça, nen peccar, / o demo “so that the devil may not make us err or sin”.^[4] A cantiga of Pero Goterrez has todos dizen que Deus nunca pecou “everyone says that God never sinned”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

From the start the verb meant to sin, and it soon covered any fault: Barbosa (1611) glosses it with Latin pecco and delinquo, and quotes Cicero on the difference between the two.^[10] With contra it means to offend against a rule, and with por to be faulty through some excess or lack: the old Caldas Aulete quotes Herculano on a zeal que só pecava por excessivo “whose only fault was excess”.^[11][2] The proverb é melhor pecar por excesso do que por falta “better to err by excess than by lack” uses this sense.^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century, second half – peccar in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[4][2]
• 14th century – the forms péca and peccasse.^[2]
• c. 1430 – pecar in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[12]
• 1611 – Barbosa glosses the verb as Latin pecco and delinquo.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. To sin; to break a religious law or the commandments of the Church.^[2][13][1]
2. To commit any fault or offence; with contra, to offend against: pecar contra a gramática.^[2][13][14]
3. With em, to fall into, incur (an error or defect).^[2][13]
4. With por, to be faulty, open to criticism; to fall short: O livro peca pela extensão.^[2][14]

Related words

• pecadilho
• pecado
• pecador
• pecaminoso
• Latin pecco
• Spanish pecar

Usage notes

Houaiss, Aurélio and the DLP enter a second verb pecar, formed from peco and the suffix -ar, meaning “to wither, fail to thrive; to become stupid”, first recorded in 1540 in João de Barros.^[2][13][14] Morais quotes it from Barros: a fruit vem a pecar from too much growth.^[15] The REW, by contrast, derives the adjective peco “spoilt” itself from the Latin verb.^[5]

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 i j Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. pecar
3. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. pecado
4. ^ 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. pecar
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 450
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. pécher
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. pecar
11. ^ 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. pecar
12. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. pecar
13. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. pecar
14. ^ a b c 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. pecar
15. ^ Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 415