purificar

Forms

purificar (first-person singular present purifico, first-person singular preterite purifiquei, past participle purificado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin pūrificō (“to cleanse, purify”), a learned word.^[2][3][1][4] Houaiss dates it to the 15th century, Cunha to the 16th.^[2][3] In Portuguese it can be read as puro with the suffix -ificar.^[1]

The same Latin verb is Galician purificar, Spanish purificar, Catalan purificar, French purifier, Italian purificare and Romanian purifica.^[1][5]

The Latin verb is a compound of pūrus (“pure, clean”) and -ficō, the combining form of faciō (“to make”).^[6][2] It is post-Augustan, first used of cleaning things with water.^[7][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CTA's first record is in the Vida de São João Clímaco, a text of 1465 in a witness of 1430–1500.^[8] Houaiss dates the verb to the 15th century from Cunha's medieval index.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In Church Latin the verb had come to mean cleansing from sin and the readmission of a woman to church after childbirth.^[9] Bluteau (1712) explains it as removing what is superfluous or harmful from a body, with examples of sea water filtered through the earth, the sun clearing the air and medicine purifying the blood.^[10] Morais (1789) adds the priest's purificar os dedos, washing his fingers at mass.^[11] Vieira's dictionary lists the purifying of water, air, blood and metals, the removal of stains by religious ceremonies and the figurative moral sense.^[12]

Timeline

• 1465 – purificar in the Vida de São João Clímaco.^[8]
• 16th century – Cunha's first date.^[3]
• 1697 – Pereira's Thesouro gives Latin lustro, emundo and expio.^[13]
• 1712 – Bluteau defines the verb with examples of water, air and blood.^[10]
• 1789 – Morais records the priest's purificar os dedos.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, reflexive) To make or become pure; to free from impurities; to purify, refine: purificar a água de um poço.^[2][14][1]
2. (transitive, reflexive, figurative) To free from sin or moral stain: Ele quis purificar-se pela oração.^[2][15]
3. (transitive) To make holy; to clear of guilt.^[16][17]
4. (transitive) To refine a metal.^[16]

Related words

• puro
• purificação
• purgar
• Latin pūrificō
• Spanish purificar

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. purificar
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. purificar
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. purificar
5. ^ 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. purificar
6. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. pūrificō
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. pūrifico
8. ^ a b Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. purificar
9. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. purificare
10. ^ 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. purificar
11. ^ 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, 265
12. ^ 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, 1028
13. ^ 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. purificar
14. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. purificar
15. ^ 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. purificar
16. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 7608
17. ^ 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. purificar