pedaço

Forms

pedaço m (plural pedaços)^[1] The Latin charters of the 10th and 11th centuries write pedazo and sometimes petazo or petaço; the spelling pedaço appears in the 13th century, and the plural pedaçoos in the 15th.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin pitaccium, a form with metathesis of Latin pittacium (“small piece of cloth; label”), which is from Ancient Greek πιττάκιον (pittákion, “writing tablet; note; label”).^{[3][4][2][5][1]} The DDGM notes that the metathesised Latin form is found in the ⟨Mulomedicina Chironis⟩, and rejects Tilander's idea of a Latin base *pedatium that would make the word a relative of peça.^[2]

The Latin word survives as Spanish pedazo, Galician pedazo and Asturian pedazu; Catalan pedaç and Occitan pedaç mean only “patch”, as do some Italian dialect forms, and it is not preserved elsewhere in Romance.^[6][7][1] The Latin sense “patch of leather, flap added to the tunic” stands between the Greek “tablet, note” and the Romance “piece”.^[6][5]

Beekes considers the origin of the Greek word unknown, mentioning Friedmann's view that it came from Thrace by way of Lesbos.^[8] Wiktionary adds that it is not related to the Greek word for “pitch”.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word appears inside Latin charters from the 10th century, used of a plot of land: pro ipso pedazo de ipsa hereditate “for that piece of the estate” (944) and uindo uno pedazo de terra “I sell a piece of land” (973).^[2][3] In Galician-Portuguese texts the sense is “fragment, piece”: in the Crónica Troiana a shield is broken into two pieces, and in a cantiga d'escarnho of Count Pedro of Portugal the rope goes en pedaços “to pieces”.^[2] Cunha dates the vernacular word to the 13th century.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The Crónica Geral speaks of hũu pedaço de soga “a piece of rope”, and the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437) is the first CTA text with the word.^[2][9] Cardoso in 1569 and Pereira in 1697 gloss it with Latin frustum “piece, bit”.^[10][11]

From a part of a thing the word passed to a part of time, “a while”, a sense the DLP marks as regional in Madeira and that a Brazilian survey also records.^[3][12][13] It is also used for a passage of a book.^[3][14] Brazilian informal speech made it a word for an attractive person (um pedaço de mulher), and passar um mau pedaço means to go through a hard time.^[3][15] The phrase pedaço de mau caminho names a dangerous, treacherous person and also an attractive one.^[3]

Timeline

• 944 – a Latin charter writes pro ipso pedazo de ipsa hereditate.^[2][3]
• 973 – uno pedazo de terra in another Latin charter;^[2] petazo appears in 1008.^[2]
• 1200s – the Galician-Portuguese word pedaço.^[4][3]
• c. 1430 – pedaço in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[9]
• 1400s – the plural spelling pedaçoos.^[3]
• 1569 – Cardoso's dictionary glosses pedaço as frustum.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A piece or portion of a solid thing, separated from the whole or not; a bit, fragment: Deu-me um pedaço de pão.^[3][14][1]
2. A stretch of time, more or less long; a while.^[3][14][1]
3. A passage of a book or other work.^[3][14]
4. (Brazil, informal) An experience, usually a bad one: passar um mau pedaço.^[3]
5. (informal) A physically attractive person.^[3][14][1]

Word family

• despedaçar
• espedaçar

Related words

• Latin pittacium
• Spanish pedazo

Usage notes

Fixed phrases include aos pedaços “in pieces; worn out”, cair aos pedaços “to fall apart; to be exhausted” and fazer em pedaços “to smash, tear to pieces”.^[3][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. pedaço
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. pedaço
4. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. pedaço
5. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. pittacium
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 456
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6547
8. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. πιττάκιον
9. ^ a b Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. pedaço
10. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. pedaço
11. ^ 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. pedaço
12. ^ 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. pedaço
13. ^ 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. pedaço
14. ^ a b c d e Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 6998
15. ^ 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. pedaço
16. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. pedaço