porco

Forms

porco m (plural porcos, feminine porca, feminine plural porcas, metaphonic)^[1] The stressed vowel is closed /o/ in the masculine singular and open /ɔ/ in the feminine porca and the plural porcos.^[1][2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin porcus (“pig”), written Old Galician-Portuguese porco in the oldest texts.^[3][4][1] Nascentes notes that it displaced sūs.^[5]

The same Latin word is Galician porco, Spanish puerco, Asturian puercu, Mirandese puorco, Catalan porc, French porc, Italian porco and Romanian porc.^[6][1]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Italic *porkos and Proto-Indo-European *pórḱos (“young pig”).^[1][7] It is cognate with Ancient Greek πόρκος (pórkos), Lithuanian paršas (“piglet”), Old High German farah and Old English fearh (“piglet”).^[7][1] De Vaan takes the original sense to be “digger”, from the root meaning “to dig up, cut” that is also in the Latin word for “furrow”, porca.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Latin charters already write the word with its Romance ending: uacas ouiculas porcos “cows, sheep, pigs” in 908, and uillare de porcos in 960.^[8] Galician documents of the 13th century have De porco j dñ “for a pig, one denarius” in 1228 and ij porcos prezados en xij soldos “two pigs valued at twelve sols” in 1257.^[8] In the Cantigas de Santa Maria devils appear to a monk en figuras de porcos “in the shape of pigs”.^[8]

Semantic evolution

In the Galician Crónica Geral the word also means “wild boar”, and porco montes is the boar.^[8] Morais (1789) records porco montez “wild boar”, porco espinho “porcupine” and peixe porco, a fish with a pig's snout, and he and Vieira note that the young animals had their own names, such as marrões and farroupos.^[9][10]

Houaiss dates the adjective “dirty” to about 1543, and Morais (1813) has it of clothes, houses and work, with vida porca for the life of a debauchee.^[3][2] Later senses are the meat, a morally base person and the devil; in Ceará the word means drunkenness, as in tomar um porco.^[3][11] The word passed into Kabuverdianu and Kaingang as porku, Papiamentu as porko and Paraguayan Guarani as poryko.^[1]

Timeline

• 908 – a Latin charter lists uacas ouiculas porcos.^[8]
• 960 – uillare de porcos in a Latin charter.^[8]
• 1228 – De porco j dñ in a Galician document.^[8]
• 1257 – ij porcos prezados en xij soldos.^[8]
• 13th century, second half – the Cantigas de Santa Maria have porcos.^[8]
• c. 1430 – the Horto do Esposo (witness 1390–1437) is the first CTA text with the word.^[12]
• c. 1543 – first record of the adjective.^[3]
• 1611 – Barbosa glosses Porco as porcus and sus.^[13]
• 1789 – Morais records porco montez and porco espinho.^[9]
• 1813 – Morais enters the adjective “dirty”.^[2]
• 1873 – first record of emporcalhar.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. pig, the domestic animal (Sus scrofa), descended from the wild boar, the javali.^[3][1][14]
2. Any mammal of the pig family, the Suidae.^[3][15]
3. pork, the meat of the pig, or a dish made with it: porco assado.^[3][1]
4. (derogatory) A dirty, slovenly person.^[3][1][16]
5. (figurative) A person of low character.^[3]
6. The devil.^[3]
7. (Ceará, informal) drunkenness.^[3][11]
8. (Brazil, football) A supporter of the Palmeiras club.^[1]

Adjective

1. filthy, unkempt.^[3][1][17]
2. (figurative) Indecent, obscene.^[3][17]
3. Badly made; coarse, of poor quality.^[1][17]

Word family

• porcada
• porcalhão
• porcaria
• porqueira
• porqueiro
• porquice
• porquinho
• porcamente
• emporcalhar
• porco-bravo
• porco-da-índia
• porco-espinho
• porco-do-mato
• espírito de porco

Related words

• pocilga
• porcino
• Latin porcus
• Galician porco
• Spanish puerco

Usage notes

Dormir como um porco is to sleep very deeply.^[18] Dictionaries list many regional synonyms, among them cerdo, cevado, cochino, suíno and varrão.^[15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 472
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. porco
4. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. porco
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. porco
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6666
7. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. porcus
8. ^ 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. porco
9. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1789), Diccionario da lingua portugueza composto pelo padre D. Rafael Bluteau, reformado, e accrescentado, 2 vols., Lisboa: Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, p. 2, 219
10. ^ 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, 849
11. ^ a b Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. porco
12. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. porco
13. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. porco
14. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. porco
15. ^ 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. porco
16. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. porco
17. ^ 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. porco
18. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 7348