quinze

Forms

quinze m or f^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote quinze and quinçe.^[2][1][3] Houaiss records quymze in the 15th century.^[4][5][6]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin quīndecim (“fifteen”), written Old Galician-Portuguese quinze in the oldest texts.^[5][2][1][3] Houaiss instead gives a Vulgar Latin quindecimus (“fifteenth”), and Aulete also starts from that form.^[6][7] The Latin numeral is a compound of quīnque (“five”) and decem (“ten”).^[8][1]

The same Latin word is Galician quince, Spanish quince, Catalan quinze, French quinze and Italian quindici.^[9][10][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

A charter of 1270 has quinçe soldos “fifteen shillings”.^[4] The Cantigas de Santa Maria tell of someone who morou ena vila ben quinze dias “stayed in the town a good fifteen days”, and the Crónica Troiana of one who fezo fazer quinze naos “had fifteen ships built”.^[4] The word is dated to the 13th century by Houaiss and Cunha too.^[6][5]

Semantic evolution

The numeral has kept its meaning since the first records.^[4][5] It is used for the fifteenth item of a series, as in the number of a day or a chapter.^[6][11] Morais (1789) lists the card game quinze de resto, in which players bid to make fifteen.^[12] In Portugal um quinze is also a school mark of fifteen points.^[3] The derivative quinzena “fortnight” is in the dictionaries from 1836.^[5]

Timeline

• 1270 – quinçe soldos in a charter.^[4]
• 13th century – the Cantigas de Santa Maria have quinze dias.^[4]
• 1364 – quinze mantees in a document.^[4]
• 1496 – first of the CTA's prose records, in the História de mui nobre Vespasiano.^[13]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses quinze with Latin quindecim.^[14]
• 1789 – Morais records the card game quinze de resto.^[12]
• 1836 – first record of quinzena.^[5]

Meanings

Numeral

1. fifteen; fourteen plus one (15, XV).^[6][11][1]
2. fifteenth: o capítulo quinze.^[6][15]

Noun

1. The number fifteen, or the figures 15 and XV.^[6][11][1]
2. The person or thing that is fifteenth in a series.^[11][3]
3. (Portugal) A school mark of fifteen points.^[3]

Word family

• quinzena
• quinzenal
• quinzeno

Related words

• Latin quindecim
• Galician quince

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. quinze
3. ^ a b c d e 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. quinze
4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. quinze
5. ^ a b c d e f Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. quinze
6. ^ a b c d e f g Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. quinze
7. ^ 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. quinze
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. quindecim
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. quindecim
10. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 429
11. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. quinze
12. ^ 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, 278
13. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. quinze
14. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. quinze
15. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. quinze