purgar

Forms

purgar (first-person singular present purgo, first-person singular preterite purguei, past participle purgado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin purgō (“to clean, purify; to excuse”), first recorded in the 13th century as the participle Old Galician-Portuguese purgada.^[2][3][4][1] Houaiss analyses the Latin verb as a compound of pūrus (“pure”) and agō (“to do, make”).^[2] The OLD explains it as the adjective with the verb-forming suffix -igō, from the older pūrigō of Plautus and Varro.^[5] Wiktionary reports that de Vaan takes the first part from Proto-Italic *pūr (“fire”) instead, so that the verb first meant “to carry the fire around”.^[1] The adjective goes back to Proto-Indo-European *ph₂u-ro- (“clear, cleansed”).^[6]

The same Latin verb is Spanish purgar, Italian purgare and French purger.^[7] Corominas treats the Spanish verb as taken from Latin, first recorded in 1220–1250.^[8] Forms with /o/ such as Catalan porgar “to sift” and Old Spanish porgar also exist, and the REW notes that the verb may have had a short /u/, in which case these would be the older forms and those with ⟨u⟩ were reshaped after the Latin adjective.^[7][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cantiga 75 of the Cantigas de Santa Maria has quero que ant'un pouco sejas ja quanto purgada “I want you to be somewhat cleansed before long”.^[3] Houaiss dates the infinitive form purgaren to the 14th century.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Notarial records of Noia in Galicia use the verb in a legal sense in 1407: a man must come a purgar súas contomasjas et rrebeldías, to make good his failures to appear in court.^[3] Morais (1813) lists cleansing the body of bad humours with purges, purifying metals of their dross, purging errors, expiating a fault, the intransitive “to discharge a bad humour” and the reflexive purgar-se “to take a purge”.^[10] Vieira (1871–1874) adds purifying sugar and the legal phrases purgar a mora, of a tenant who shows a valid reason for paying his rent late, and purgar a revelia.^[11] In the north of Portugal the vine is said to purgar when it drops its flowers.^[12][13]

Timeline

• 13th century – the participle purgada in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[3][2]
• 14th century – the form purgaren.^[2]
• 1407 – purgar súas contomasjas in the notarial records of Noia.^[3]
• 1607 – purgado in a private letter.^[14]
• 1697 – Pereira glosses it with Latin purgo and lustro.^[15]
• 1813 – Morais lists the medical, metallurgical and moral senses.^[10]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira records purgar a mora.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. To make pure, to rid of impurities; to purify or refine: purgar o ouro.^{[2][16][17][1]}
2. To rid (a place or thing) of harmful people or things: A reforma purgou o regulamento de artigos inúteis.^[2][12]
3. To expiate a fault or sin;^{[2][16][17][1]} (reflexive) to redeem oneself: purgar uma falta antiga.^{[2][16][17][1]}
4. To give someone a laxative (purgante);^{[2][16][17][1]} (reflexive) to take one.^{[2][16][17][1]}
5. (intransitive) Of a wound, to discharge pus: O corte ainda purga.^[2][16][17]
6. (law) purgar a mora: to settle a late payment, showing a valid reason for the delay.^[11]
7. (northern Portugal) Of the vine, to drop its flowers.^[12][13]

Word family

• purga
• purgante
• purgador

Related words

• purgação
• purgativo
• purgatório
• expurgar
• puro
• Latin purgō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. purgar
3. ^ a b c d e 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. purgar
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. purgar
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. purgō
6. ^ 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. pūrus
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6859
8. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. puro
9. ^ 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. porgar
10. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 527
11. ^ a b c 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, 1027
12. ^ a b c 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. purgar
13. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 7607
14. ^ 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. purgar
15. ^ 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. purgar
16. ^ a b c d e f 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. purgar
17. ^ a b c d e f Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. purgar