quase

Forms

quase (not comparable)^[1] The 15th-century texts write quassy, quasi, cassy, cazy, caise, caisi, caje, quaije, acaije, acaise and aquaijo beside quase.^[2][3] Wiktionary lists the variants quási, quasi, quazi, quaze and quaje.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin quasi (“as if; just as; almost”).^[2][3][4][1] Wiktionary calls it a semi-learned borrowing, and Nascentes notes archaic and popular forms without the /w/ of the learned spelling, citing Nunes's historical grammar.^[1][5]

The same Latin word is Spanish casi and Spanish cuasi, French quasi, Italian quasi and Old Occitan cais.^[6][1] Corominas explains the Spanish pair by a stressed and an unstressed pronunciation of the word.^[7]

The Latin word is a univerbation of quam (“how, as”) and sī (“if”), with both vowels shortened; old inscriptions write it quasei.^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lorenzo's chronology has quassy nada “almost nothing” in a text of 1460, the date Houaiss gives for the first record.^[9][2] A witness of the Livro das tres vertudes a inssinança das damas made after 1450 writes casy.^[10] The sense is the modern one, “almost, nearly”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Nascentes quotes Azurara's Crónica de Guiné for the popular form: Que casy todos o avyam por maravilha “so that nearly all held it a marvel”.^[5] The forms caje, quaje and quaji appear in the glossary of Sá de Miranda.^[9] The Latin sense “as if” survived for a time in a conjunction, which the DLP marks as no longer used.^[11]

The popular forms without /w/ still live in the dialects: the REW cites quaise from Lisbon and caize and acajo from the Minho, and the TLPGP records acaije, aquase, caije, cais, quaije and quais in Portugal.^[6][12] In Cape Verdean Portuguese the word has come to mean “perhaps”.^[13][14]

Timeline

• 1460 – quassy nada “almost nothing”, the first dated record.^[9][2]
• second half of the 15th century – casy in a witness of the Livro das tres vertudes made after 1450.^[10]
• 1542 – a private letter writes casy.^[15]
• 1741 – a letter from Santarém writes quazi.^[16]

Meanings

Adverb

1. near, close to, a short distance away in space or time: Moramos quase em frente à escola.^[2][13][11]
2. almost, nearly, a little less than: Já passaram quase dez anos.^[2][13][17]
3. approximately, more or less; to some degree: O livro está quase pronto.^[2][11]
4. By a hair, so that something nearly happened but did not: Quase perdi o comboio.^[2][13]
5. (Cape Verde) perhaps, probably.^[13][11][14]

Noun

1. (informal) A near thing, something that almost happened.^[1]

Related words

• Latin quasi
• Spanish casi

Usage notes

Quase que is used for “so to speak, practically”, and quase quase for “all but, any moment now”.^[2][17][14] In the speech of the countryside of Rio Grande do Sul the word is pronounced quági or quáji, Schlee notes.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. quase
3. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. quase
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. quase
5. ^ a b 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
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6937
7. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 908
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. quasi
9. ^ a b c d 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. quassy
10. ^ a b Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. casy
11. ^ a b c d 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. quase
12. ^ 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. quase
13. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. quase
14. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 7637
15. ^ 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. quase
16. ^ NEHiLP – Núcleo de Apoio à Pesquisa em Etimologia e História da Língua Portuguesa, Universidade de São Paulo, DELPo: Dicionário Etimológico da Língua Portuguesa (online database), p. s.v. quase
17. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. quase
18. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. quase