pequeno

Forms

pequeno (feminine pequena, masculine plural pequenos, feminine plural pequenas, comparable, comparative menor or (Portugal, nonstandard in Brazil) mais pequeno, superlative pequeníssimo)^[1] Houaiss records the medieval forms pequena, pequeno and pequenho (13th century), pecena (14th) and piqueno (15th).^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin pitinnus (“small”), crossed with the expressive root *pikk- that also appears in Italian piccolo and piccino.^[2][3][4] Wiktionary instead derives it, with doubt, from *peccuinnus.^[1]

Corominas treats Spanish pequeño, the Portuguese word and Sardinian pikinnu of the oldest Sardinian texts as expressive creations, members of a large Romance family of words for smallness (French petit, pithinnu and the Italian word) built on an initial /p/, a stressed front vowel, a voiceless stop and the ending ⟨-innu⟩.^[5] The Vulgar Latin word is already recorded, and in Ibero-Romance it combined with the inner consonant of the Italian type.^[5] Only Portuguese and Sardinian have forms parallel to the Spanish one.^[5] The French word comes from a related type with ⟨-itt-⟩.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the feminine pequena to 1117, citing Machado;^[2][5] Corominas documents the Galician-Portuguese word from about 1215.^[2][5] In the cantigas d'amigo it means “young in years”, and the satirical cantigas speak of pequena prol “little profit”.^[7][8]

Semantic evolution

The Crónica Troiana already uses the word in three senses: small in size, young (hun dos mays pequenos fillos “one of the youngest sons”) and common, not noble (nẽ pequeno nẽ grand “neither low nor great”).^[7] Corominas notes that the word is even more general in Galician-Portuguese than in Spanish, its only competitor being miúdo.^[5] Silva Bastos (1912) records the noun pequeno “boy” and, in the plural, “the common people”.^[9] Informally pequeno, pequena is also a boyfriend or girlfriend.^[10][4]

Timeline

• 1117 – Houaiss's first date, for the feminine pequena, after Machado.^[2]
• c. 1215 – first Galician-Portuguese record according to Corominas.^[5]
• 13th century – the forms pequeno and pequenho.^[2]
• 14th century – the form pecena.^[2]
• c. 1400 – a Flos Sanctorum fragment (copied 1380–1425) uses the word.^[11]
• 15th century – the forms piqueno and peqno.^[2]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses Pequeno with the Latin paruus.^[12]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau defines it as the contrary of grande and grosso.^[13]
• 1912 – Silva Bastos records the noun senses “boy” and, in the plural, “the common people”.^[9]

Meanings

Adjective

1. small, of little extent or volume: um quarto pequeno.^[2][14][1]
2. Short in stature.^[2][15]
3. Young, still a child: Mudou-se para o Brasil quando era pequeno.^[2][15]
4. Of little value or importance; small in scale: um pequeno negócio.^[14][10]
5. Not very intense: um pequeno susto.^[10]
6. petty, mean, ungenerous.^[10][15]

Noun

1. (colloquial) A child.^[1][4]
2. (informal) A boyfriend or girlfriend.^[4][10]
3. (in the plural) The poor, the common people.^[10][9]

Word family

• pequenez
• pequenino

Related words

• Spanish pequeño
• Italian piccolo

Usage notes

The comparative is menor;^[1] mais pequeno is normal in Portugal but nonstandard in Brazil.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. pequeno
3. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. pequeno
4. ^ a b c d 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. pequeno
5. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 484
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. petit
7. ^ a b 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. pequeno
8. ^ 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. pequeno
9. ^ a b c Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. pequeno
10. ^ a b c d e f 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. pequeno
11. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. pequeno
12. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. pequeno
13. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. pequeno
14. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. pequeno
15. ^ a b c 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. pequeno