presumir

Forms

presumir (first-person singular present presumo, first-person singular preterite presumi, past participle presumido)^[1] Houaiss records the medieval spellings presume (13th century), presomiam and prosumir (15th century).^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin praesūmō (“to take beforehand; to anticipate, suppose”).^[2][3][1] Nascentes calls it a semi-learned word and glosses the Latin verb “to take in advance”.^[4][5] It corresponds to Spanish presumir.^[6]

The Latin verb is formed from prae- (“before”) and sūmō (“to take”).^[7][1] Its first sense was concrete, “to consume beforehand”, and the senses “to suppose, take for granted” and “to venture, dare” came later.^[7][8][9] Wiktionary traces the simple verb back to *emō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁em- (“to take”), and gives an earlier form *susmō from a compound with *sups- “under, up”.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the verb to the 13th century, from a text he cites as InedAlc, in the spelling presume;^[2][3] Cunha gives the 14th century.^[2][3] The first sense he lists is “to draw a conclusion in advance, from signs and conjectures rather than proven facts”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The early dictionaries give the verb only the sense “to conjecture, suspect”: Cardoso (1569) renders it with Latin coniecto, Barbosa (1611) with coniicio and suspicor, and Bluteau with “to persuade oneself of something from signs or conjectures” and “to judge”.^[10][11][12] Bluteau's examples are legal: what may or may not be presumed of a man who defended himself with arms.^[12]

The intransitive and reflexive sense “to be conceited, to boast of oneself” is recorded by Silva Bastos in 1912 and is listed by Houaiss, Michaelis and the Porto dictionary today; it matches the sense of the noun presunção.^{[2][13][14][15]} The participle presumido is dated 1813 by Cunha.^[3]

Timeline

• 13th century – presume in a text Houaiss cites as InedAlc.^[2]
• 14th century – Cunha's date for the verb.^[3]
• c. 1450 – presumir in the Livro das três virtudes (witness after 1450).^[16]
• 15th century – the spellings presomiam and prosumir.^[2]
• 1569 – Cardoso's dictionary glosses the verb with Latin coniecto “I conjecture”.^[10]
• 1588 – presume in a private letter.^[17]
• 1611 – Barbosa adds the senses “to suppose, suspect”.^[11]
• 1813 – first record of the participle presumido.^[3]
• 1858 – first record of presumível.^[18][3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To presume, to conjecture: to conclude in advance from signs rather than from proof: Presumo que o comboio vem atrasado.^[2][19][20]
2. (transitive) To suppose beforehand; to foresee, presuppose.^[2][19]
3. (transitive) To suspect, to distrust.^[2][19][15]
4. (transitive) To imagine without real grounds.^[2]
5. (intransitive, reflexive, with de) To be conceited, to boast of being something: presumir de poeta.^[2][20][14]

Word family

• presumível
• presumido

Related words

• presunção
• presunçoso
• presuntivo
• Latin praesūmō
• Spanish presumir

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. presumir
3. ^ a b c d e f g Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. presumir
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. presumir
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 415
6. ^ Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. presumir
7. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. praesumo
9. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. praesumere
10. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. presumir
11. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. presumir
12. ^ a b Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. presumir
13. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. presumir
14. ^ a b 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. presumir
15. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 7460
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. presumir
17. ^ CLUL (ed.) (2014), P.S. Post Scriptum: Arquivo Digital de Escrita Quotidiana em Portugal e Espanha na Época Moderna, Lisboa: Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, http://ps.clul.ul.pt, p. s.v. presumir
18. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. presumível
19. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. presumir
20. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. presumir