quarenta

Forms

quarenta m or f^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote quaraenta, quareenta, quaranta and quarenta in the 13th century, quoreta in the 14th, and corenta and quoorenta in the 15th.^[2][3] The form corenta is still heard in popular speech.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin quadrāgintā (“forty”), through the spoken Latin form Vulgar Latin quarainta, without the ⟨d⟩.^[2][3][4][1] The old forms Old Galician-Portuguese quaraenta and Old Galician-Portuguese quareenta show the hiatus that later contracted.^[4][3] Nascentes takes the modern form as remade from the old and popular Old Galician-Portuguese corenta.^[4] Houaiss also cites a form quarranta.^[2]

The Latin form without ⟨d⟩, the only one the Romance languages continue, already appears as ⟨qaragita⟩ in African inscriptions;^[6] Corominas puts the loss down to a dissimilation of the two dental stops, helped by the careless pronunciation of numerals.^[6] Nunes thought the ⟨d⟩ was already lost in popular Latin, as the other Romance languages show.^[7]

The same Latin word is Galician corenta, Spanish cuarenta, Catalan coranta, Italian quaranta, French quarante and Sardinian baranta.^[8][9][6] The Latin numeral is formed on the stem of quattuor (“four”) with -gintā (“tens”).^[10] It goes back to Proto-Indo-European *kʷétwr̥dḱomt (“four tens”), as do Ancient Greek τετρώκοντα (tetrṓkonta) and Sanskrit चत्वारिंशत् (catvāriṃśát).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the first records to the 13th century, in the forms quaraenta and quareenta as well as quarenta.^[2][3] Huber discusses the old forms quarenta and quareenta in his grammar of Old Portuguese.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The numeral has kept its meaning; the dictionaries add the noun for the number and for the fortieth in a series.^[2][12] Morais records the jubileu das quarenta horas, a devotion of the Carnival days.^[13] In Alagoas and Pernambuco the noun names a popular dish, a maize-meal porridge with bits of jerked beef or grated coconut.^[14]

The word passed into the Portuguese-based creoles: korénta in Kabuverdianu, korenta in Guinea-Bissau Creole and Kristang.^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century – quaraenta and quareenta.^[3][2]
• 14th century – the form quoreta.^[2]
• 15th century – corenta and quoorenta.^[2]
• 1433 – quarenta in the Vita Christi (a 15th-century witness).^[15]
• 1503 – corẽta in a private letter.^[16]
• 1611 – Barbosa gives quarenta with Latin quadraginta.^[17]
• 1789 – Morais records the jubileu das quarenta horas.^[13]
• 1817–1819 – first record of quarentão, with the feminine quarentona.^[18]

Meanings

Numeral

1. forty: thirty plus ten: Esperámos quarenta minutos.^[2][19][1]
2. (after a noun) fortieth in a series: a sala quarenta.^[2][19]

Noun

1. The number forty, written 40 or XL.^[2][20]
2. The person or thing that is fortieth in a series.^[20][19]
3. (Alagoas, Pernambuco) A maize-meal porridge with bits of charque or grated coconut.^[14]

Word family

• quarentão

Related words

• quarentena
• quatro
• quadragésimo
• Latin quadrāgintā
• Galician corenta
• Spanish cuarenta

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 h i j k Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. quarenta
3. ^ a b c d e Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. quarenta
4. ^ a b c d Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. quarenta
5. ^ Instituto da Lingua Galega, Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués (TLPGP), Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/tesouro, p. s.v. quarenta
6. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 259
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 425
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. corenta
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. quadrāgintā
11. ^ Huber, Joseph (1933), Altportugiesisches Elementarbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. § 112
12. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. quarenta
13. ^ 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, 270
14. ^ a b Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. quarenta
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. quarenta
16. ^ 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. quarenta
17. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. quarenta
18. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. quarentão
19. ^ a b c 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. quarenta
20. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. quarenta