pentear

Forms

pentear (first-person singular present penteio, first-person singular preterite penteei, past participle penteado)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote peitear in the 13th century, and pentear and petear in the 14th.^[2][3] Feijó (1734) prescribes pentear against pentiar.^[4]

Etymology

Nascentes, Aurélio, the REW and Wiktionary take it as inherited from Latin pectinō (“to comb”), which is formed on pecten (“comb”).^[5][6][7][1] The oldest form, Old Galician-Portuguese peitear, shows the Latin /kt/ becoming /it/.^[8][1] Houaiss, the DLP and Michaelis instead derive it from Portuguese pente + -ear as a formation of their own language, and Houaiss records Old Galician-Portuguese pentear and Old Galician-Portuguese petear only from the 14th century.^[2][9][10]

The Latin verb is continued in Galician peitear, Spanish peinar, Catalan pentinar, Occitan penchenar, French peigner, Italian pettinare and Romanian pieptăna.^[7][1] In Latin and the Romance languages it was often also used for carding hemp.^[7][11]

The noun pecten goes back to *pekten and Proto-Indo-European *pḱtḗn, from the root *peḱ- (“to pluck”), and is cognate with Ancient Greek κτείς (kteís).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is a satirical cantiga of Afonso X, in which half a ram's tail is combed and tied at the neck: e outro meio filhou / e peitea-lo mandou “and he took the other half and had it combed”.^[8][12] Houaiss dates the verb to the 13th century from the Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The sense “to comb the hair” has been constant: Cardoso (1569) glosses Pentear with Latin pecto, and Bluteau defines it as untangling and arranging the hair with a comb.^[13][14] Morais (1813) quotes a translation of the Aeneid in which hunters comb the thickets of the mountains, a figurative use he marks as little used.^[15]

Silva Bastos records the reflexive pentear-se in the familiar sense “to aspire to something, to prepare oneself”.^[16] Later senses extend the comb to other things: grooming an animal's coat, polishing a text, cleaning textile fibres, harrowing the soil in the dialects of Portugal, and in football passing the sole of the boot over the ball.^[2][17][18]

Timeline

• 13th century – peitea-lo in a cantiga d'escarnho of Afonso X.^[8][2]
• 14th century – the spellings pentear and petear.^[2]
• c. 1430 – pentear in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[19]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses Pentear with Latin pecto.^[13]
• 1734 – Feijó prescribes the spelling pentear.^[4]
• 1813 – Morais records the figurative “to comb the thickets”.^[15]
• 1912 – Silva Bastos records pentear-se “to aspire”.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. To comb or arrange the hair, one's own or another person's: Penteou a filha antes da escola.^[2][6][1]
2. To comb or groom the coat of an animal.^[2]
3. To polish or improve a text.^[2]
4. To clean textile fibres of impurities.^[17]
5. (reflexive, informal) To prepare oneself for something, to aspire to it: penteia-se para presidente.^[2][20]
6. (football) To pass the sole of the boot over the ball to control it.^[2]

Word family

• penteado
• penteadeira
• penteador

Related words

• pente
• Latin pectino
• Galician peitear
• Spanish peinar

Usage notes

The phrase ir pentear macacos “go and comb monkeys” is used to send someone away rudely.^[20][17][21]

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 j k Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. pentear
3. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. pente
4. ^ a b Feijó, João de Morais Madureira (1734), Orthographia, ou Arte de escrever, e pronunciar com acerto a lingua portugueza, Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. pentear
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. pentear
6. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. pentear
7. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6329
8. ^ a b c 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. peitear
9. ^ 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. pentear
10. ^ 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. pentear
11. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. pectino
12. ^ Universo Cantigas: Glosario da poesía medieval profana galego-portuguesa, A Coruña: Instituto da Lingua e Literatura (ILLA), Universidade da Coruña, https://www.universocantigas.gal, p. s.v. peitear
13. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. pentear
14. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. pentear
15. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 429
16. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. pentear
17. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 7056
18. ^ 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. pentear
19. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. pentear
20. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. pentear
21. ^ 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. pentear