sábado

Forms

sábado m (plural sábados)^[1] Houaiss records the 14th-century spelling ssabbado.^[2] Barbosa (1611) heads the word Sabbado, and sabbado remained the usual spelling until the 20th-century reforms.^[3][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Ecclesiastical Latin sabbatum (“Sabbath”), written Old Galician-Portuguese sabado in the oldest texts.^[2][4][1] Houaiss notes that classical Latin more often used the plural for the same day.^[2] The Latin word is from Ancient Greek σάββατον (sábbaton), from Biblical Hebrew שַׁבָּת (šabbāṯ, “day of rest”).^[4][1][5] Corriente and the DLE trace the Hebrew word further to Akkadian šabattum (“rest”).^[6][7] For the Greek word Wiktionary also allows an origin in Aramaic שַׁבְּתָא (šabbəṯā).^[1]

The same Latin word is Galician sábado, Spanish sábado and Italian sabato, while Romanian sâmbătă, French samedi and German Samstag go back to a variant *sambatum with an inserted nasal, which the REW considers already eastern.^[8] Spanish has the word in a document of 1124.^[9] Portuguese also has sabá, a doublet of the same origin.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lorenzo's chronology dates the word to 1262 in Galician non-literary texts, and the Cantigas de Santa Maria of the 13th century also use it.^[10] Houaiss dates it to the 13th century from Cunha's medieval slips.^[2] A 15th-century Galician harbour record dates an event sábado, VIJ djas do dito mes “Saturday, the seventh day of the said month”.^[10] The word meant the seventh day of the week from the start.^[4][10]

Semantic evolution

Barbosa's 1611 dictionary explains the Latin usage of the Church, in which the days of the week were counted from the Sabbath.^[3] Morais (1789) defines the day as the one after Friday that the Jews keep by abstaining from all work.^[11] His 1813 edition adds a funeral sense: the sábado was the seventh day after a death, with a visit to the grave and the exequies for the dead.^[12]

Set phrases name days of the Church year: Sábado de Aleluia or Sábado Santo, the Saturday of Holy Week, and sábado gordo and sábado magro, the two Saturdays before Carnival.^[2][13] Caldas Aulete adds sábado perpétuo, the eternal rest of the blessed.^[13] Houaiss and Aurélio record the sense “nocturnal gathering of witches”, and in Galicia the witches were believed to meet on Saturday nights.^[2][14][15] In Portugal Houaiss gives sábado seco for the eve of a holy day, and the Porto dictionary a popular sense “orgy”.^[2][16]

The word passed into the creoles and the languages in contact with Portuguese: sabadu in Kabuverdianu and Guinea-Bissau Creole, sabhalu in Kimbundu, saurú in Nheengatu and loron-sábadu in Tetum.^[1]

Timeline

• 1262 – first record in a Galician non-literary text, after Lorenzo.^[10]
• 13th century – the Cantigas de Santa Maria use the word.^[10]
• 14th century – the spelling ssabbado.^[2]
• 1540 – sabados in a private letter.^[17]
• 1611 – Barbosa heads the word Sabbado.^[3]
• 1692 – sabbado in the Vida e Milagres de Santa Senhorinha de Basto.^[18]
• 1789 – Morais defines the day as the one the Jews keep free of work.^[11]
• 1813 – Morais adds the seventh-day exequies for the dead.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. Saturday, the seventh day of the week counted from Sunday, between Friday and Sunday: Vemo-nos no sábado.^[2][14][1]
2. The Sabbath, the day of rest of the Jews and of some Christian groups.^[2][19][1]
3. A nocturnal gathering of witches, a witches' sabbath.^[2][14]
4. (Portugal, popular) An orgy.^[16]

Adverb

1. On Saturday: Ela chega sábado.^[1]

Word family

• sabadear
• sabadão

Related words

• sabá
• sabático
• sabatina
• Latin sabbatum
• Galician sábado

Usage notes

In Portugal and Brazil the names of the days are written with a small letter, but the feast days Sábado de Aleluia, Sábado Gordo and Sábado Magro usually take a capital.^[19]

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. sábado
3. ^ a b c Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. sabbado
4. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. sábado
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. sábado
6. ^ Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sábado
7. ^ 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. sábado
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7479
9. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 102
10. ^ 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. sábado
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, 362
12. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 650
13. ^ a b 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. sábado
14. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. sábado
15. ^ Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. sábado
16. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 8210
17. ^ 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. sábado
18. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. sabbado
19. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. sábado