pomo

Forms

pomo m (plural pomos)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pōmum (“fruit; fruit tree”).^[2][3][4][1] Houaiss lists the Latin senses “fruit, especially one with a stone”, “any kind of fruit”, “seed” and “fruit tree”, and notes that in some Romance languages the word came to mean the apple in particular.^[2]

The same Latin word is Spanish pomo, Italian pomo, French pomme and Catalan poma “apple”, and Romanian poamă “fruit”.^[5][6] Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Italic *poomos, most likely from a compound *po-emo- (“picked off”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the word to the 14th century, from Cunha's index of medieval Portuguese, while Cunha's own dictionary gives the 16th.^[2][3] The Horto do Esposo, in a copy of 1390–1437, uses it twice.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Pereira (1697) glosses pomo with Latin pomum and malum “apple”, and Morais (1813) defines it as every sort of apple (maçãs, peros, camoezes), adding pomo vedado, the fruit God forbade Adam.^[8][9] Vieira quotes the Arte de Furtar on the pomos de Pentapoli, golden outside and rotten within, and letters of the Cavaleiro de Oliveira on the golden apple of the Greek myth.^[10] The old Caldas Aulete has the poetic sense “a woman's breast”, with a line of Garrett, and the phrase pomo de discórdia.^[11] Botany later narrowed the word to the pome, the fruit type of the apple and the pear.^[2][12] As in Spanish, pomo was also the knob of a sword's hilt, a sense Michaelis marks as old.^[5][13]

Timeline

• 14th century – first record, in Cunha's index of medieval Portuguese.^[2]
• c. 1430 – pomo in the Horto do Esposo (witness 1390–1437).^[7]
• 1697 – Pereira glosses it with Latin pomum and malum.^[8]
• 1813 – Morais lists pomo vedado, the forbidden fruit.^[9]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira quotes the Arte de Furtar on the pomos de Pentapoli.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. (botany) A pome, a fleshy fruit whose edible part grows from the receptacle of the flower around the ovary, as in the apple (maçã), the pear and the quince.^{[2][12][14][1]}
2. Any fleshy, roughly round fruit.^[15][11]
3. (poetic) A woman's breast; poma.^{[2][15][14][1]}
4. (archaic) The pommel, the small ball at the end of a sword's hilt.^[13]

Word family

• poma

Related words

• pômulo
• pomífero
• pomologia
• pomicultura
• Latin pōmum
• Spanish pomo

Usage notes

Pomo de discórdia “apple of discord” is a person or thing that causes a quarrel, and pomo proibido or pomo vedado is the forbidden fruit of the Bible and, figuratively, a pleasure that is denied.^[16][12][13] Michaelis records pomo-de-adão for the Adam's apple.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. pomo
3. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. pomo
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. pomo
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6645
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 410
7. ^ a b Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. pomo
8. ^ a b 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. pomo
9. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 466
10. ^ a b Vieira, Frei Domingos (1871–1874), Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da lingua portugueza, 5 vols., Porto: Ernesto Chardron e Bartholomeu H. de Moraes, p. 4, 835
11. ^ a b 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. pomo
12. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. pomo
13. ^ a b c d 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. pomo
14. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 7328
15. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. pomo
16. ^ 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. pomo