relevar

Forms

relevar (first-person singular present relevo, first-person singular preterite relevei, past participle relevado)^[1] The oldest texts write rreleuar, releuar and rrelevando.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin relevō (“to lift up again; to relieve of a burden”).^[2][5][1] Nascentes calls it a learned word, and Wiktionary contrasts it with the inherited doublet relvar “to turf”.^[5][1] The first record is a Galician charter of 1384 with Old Galician-Portuguese rreleuamos “we release” and rreleuar.^[4] Lorenzo thereby antedates Machado, who had placed the word in the 15th century.^[4][2]

The Latin verb is formed re- and levō (“to lift, to lighten”), which comes from levis (“light, not heavy”).^[6][7][1] Its descendants and borrowings in the other Romance languages include Spanish relevar, Catalan rellevar, French relever and Italian rilevare.^[8][1] For the French verb the DHLF allows both a formation within French and a borrowing from the Latin one.^[9]

Corominas traces the inherited doublet and the Leonese verb ralbar (“to plough fallow land for the first time”) to the same Latin word.^[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the charter of 1384 the verb has a legal sense: the parties rreleuamos a uos … de todo dapño, releasing the other side from all damage, and promise de rreleuar uos from a surety and its obligation.^[4] Medieval Latin already had this sense, “to release, discharge” someone from something.^[12]

Semantic evolution

From “to relieve, release” came “to pardon, overlook”, which Houaiss dates to the 15th century, and “to ease, console”.^[2] The impersonal sense “to matter, be important” is the one the first dictionaries give: Barbosa (1611) and Pereira (1697) gloss relevar with Latin interest and refert, and Bluteau quotes Releva muyto “it matters greatly” from the Corte na Aldea of Rodrigues Lobo.^[13][14][15]

Morais (1789) lists “to absolve, pardon” (relevar a pena, relevar a falta), “to relieve” someone of work or pain, and the painters' sense, to paint a figure so that it seems to stand out.^[16] That sense, “to give relief to, make stand out”, is the first in the modern dictionaries.^[2][17][18] Priberam also records a sense “to derive, arise from”, which it marks as a Gallicism.^[19]

Timeline

• 1384 – rreleuamos and rreleuar in a Galician charter.^[4]
• 14th century – the forms releve and releuar.^[2]
• 15th century – first record of the sense “to pardon”.^[2]
• 1542 – relevarei in a private letter.^[20]
• 1611 – Barbosa's dictionary glosses the verb as “to matter”.^[13]
• 1712 – Bluteau quotes Releva muyto from Rodrigues Lobo.^[15]
• 1789 – Morais gives the senses “to pardon”, “to relieve” and “to paint in relief”.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To give relief (relevo) to; to make prominent or stand out.^[2][17][1]
2. (transitive) To ease, relieve or console: o carinho dela relevava-lhe a tristeza.^[2][19]
3. (transitive) To allow, permit.^[2][1]
4. (transitive) To pardon, overlook or excuse a fault: relevar um atraso.^[2][21][1]
5. (intransitive) To matter, be important or needed: releva dizer que….^[2][18][1]
6. (pronominal) To stand out, be distinguished.^[2][22]
7. (law) To pardon, exempt from.^[2]

Word family

• relevo
• relevamento

Related words

• relevante
• relvar
• levar
• Latin relevō
• Spanish relevar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. relevar
3. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. relevar
4. ^ 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. releuar
5. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. relevar
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7192
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. relever
10. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 759
11. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. relvar
12. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. relevare
13. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. relevar
14. ^ 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. relevar
15. ^ 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. relevar
16. ^ 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, 316
17. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. relevar
18. ^ a b 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. relevar
19. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. relevar
20. ^ 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. relevar
21. ^ 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. relevar
22. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 7958