saco

Forms

saco m (plural sacos, diminutive saquinho)^[1] Houaiss records ssaco in the 14th century and saquo in the 15th;^[2][3] Bluteau (1712) heads it saco, ou sacco.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin saccus (“sack, bag”), written Old Galician-Portuguese saco in the 13th century and Old Galician-Portuguese ssaco in the 14th.^[2][4][1] The Latin word is from Ancient Greek σάκκος (sákkos, “coarse cloth of goat hair; sack”).^[2][5][6] Houaiss notes that in Church Latin it meant above all the hair shirt worn in penance.^[2]

The same Latin word is Galician saco, Spanish saco, Catalan sac, French sac, Italian sacco and Romanian sac.^[7][1]

The Greek word is generally taken as a loan from a Semitic language, perhaps Phoenician;^[2][8][1] Houaiss, Nascentes and Wiktionary compare Biblical Hebrew שַׂק (śaq, “sackcloth; sack”).^[2][8][1] Wiktionary calls it a widely borrowed trade word of the Mediterranean.^[9] Corriente, Pereira and Vicente derive the Ibero-Romance words ultimately from Egyptian.^[10] Bluteau already reported the Hebrew origin and listed the word in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, French and English.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Cantigas de Santa Maria someone meteu-a en un saco “put it in a sack”, and a satirical cantiga of Fernan Paez de Tamalancos against a minstrel named Saco plays on per saco medes “you measure by the sack”.^[4][11]

Semantic evolution

Besides the bag, Bluteau (1712–1728) describes saco as the coarse mourning or penitential garment of the Bible.^[3] Morais (1813) adds saco de terra, a piece of land sown with six alqueires of wheat.^[12] By extension the word names coarse jute cloth, a badly made baggy garment, the hood of a chimney, and in anatomy several pouch-like cavities.^[2]

In Brazil it names a small bay, a crescent-shaped cut in the edge of a mountain range, and the weekly provisions of the diamond miners of Bahia.^[2][13] Brazilian slang uses it for the testicles and hence for patience (não ter saco) and for something tiresome (que saco!).^[2][1] The compound puxa-saco is a flatterer.^[1]

Timeline

• 1200s – saco in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[2][4]
• 1300s – the spelling ssaco.^[2]
• 1437 – a prouysão se deue começar no começo do saco “provision should begin at the top of the sack”.^[4]
• c. 1430 – saco in the Horto do Esposo.^[14]
• 1569 – Cardoso renders it with Latin saccus.^[15]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau describes the penitential saco of the Bible.^[3]
• 1813 – Morais records saco de terra as a measure of land.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. bag, sack: a container of cloth, paper, leather or plastic, open only at the top.^[2][1]
2. The contents of a sack: dois sacos de batatas.^[2][16]
3. Coarse cloth for sacks; aniagem, burlap.^[2][17]
4. A small suitcase or travelling bag.^[2][18]
5. (historical) A coarse garment of mourning or penance.^[2][3]
6. A loose, badly made garment; a baggy part of clothing.^[2]
7. (anatomy) A pouch-like cavity of the body: saco lacrimal.^[2][19]
8. (fishing) The cone-shaped bag of a trawl net, where the catch collects.^[2][18]
9. (Brazil) A small cove or bay; in Bahia and Pernambuco, a crescent-shaped cut in the edge of a mountain range.^[2][13]
10. (Brazil, vulgar) The scrotum, the testicles.^[2][1]
11. (Brazil, vulgar) Patience; something tiresome or annoying: Não tenho saco para isto.^[2][1]

Word family

• sacola
• saquinho
• saqueta
• puxa-saco
• saco-cama
• ensacar

Related words

• Latin saccus
• Spanish saco

Usage notes

Aulete and Michaelis enter a separate, now obsolete saco “plunder, sack of a town”, a back-formation from saquear.^[16][20] Barbosa (1611) already glosses saco with Latin direptio “plundering”.^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. saco
3. ^ a b c d e f Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. saco
4. ^ 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. saco
5. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ 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. saco
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. saccus
8. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. saco
9. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. σάκκος
10. ^ Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. saco
11. ^ Universo Cantigas: Glosario da poesía medieval profana galego-portuguesa, A Coruña: Instituto da Lingua e Literatura (ILLA), Universidade da Coruña, https://www.universocantigas.gal, p. s.v. saco
12. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 653
13. ^ a b Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. saco
14. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. saco
15. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. saco
16. ^ a b 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. saco
17. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. saco
18. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 8226
19. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. saco
20. ^ 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. saco
21. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. saco