seio

Forms

seio m (plural seios)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote sẽo and seo; later forms are seeo (14th century), sseio (15th) and seio (1572).^[2][3] Bluteau and 18th-century letters spell it seyo.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sinus (“curve, fold of a garment, bosom”), written Old Galician-Portuguese sẽo, also without the tilde, in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1] The tilde of the oldest spelling marks a nasal vowel where Latin had /n/, and the modern form, with ⟨i⟩ between the vowels, is recorded from 1572.^[2][3] Houaiss explains that the Latin noun named the curved fold of the toga in which mothers carried their children, hence “lap, bosom, breast” and “refuge”, and also the belly of a sail and a curved bay.^[2] The learned seno is a doublet.^[1]

Galician still has the old form; the same Latin word is Spanish seno, French sein, Italian seno and Romanian sân.^[6][1]

De Vaan finds no etymology beyond a probable link with gji (“breast”).^[7] Wiktionary sets up *sinus and *sinos.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date seo to the 13th century.^[2][3] A cantiga d'escarnho of Estevan da Guarda wishes that something may do a man good en seu seo “in his bosom”, and the Miragres de Santiago place a soul resting ẽno seo de Santiago “in the bosom of Saint James”.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Morais (1789) gives the sense “fold made by gathering up the skirts of a garment” first, then the pouch the shirt makes over the chest, a hidden inner place (os seios do Averno), a woman's breasts, and the phrase ser do seio de alguém “to be someone's intimate”.^[9] He also has the geographical sense, o seio Arábico “the Arabian Gulf”, which Corominas notes was kept in classical Portuguese and in parts of Galicia;^[9][10] Portuguese enseada “cove” is from the 15th century.^[9][10][3]

In modern use the word means above all the female breast, and figuratively the heart or innermost part of anything (no seio da família, no seio da floresta).^[2][11] Anatomy uses it for cavities such as the sinuses of the skull, and sailors for the slack middle part of a rope.^[2][11]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, spelt seo.^[2][3]
• 14th century – the spelling seeo.^[2]
• 15th century – the spelling sseio, and the derivative enseada.^[2][3]
• 1572 – first record of the spelling seio.^[2]
• 1712 – Bluteau heads the word seyo.^[4]
• 1789 – Morais lists the senses “fold of a garment”, “breast” and “gulf”.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. A curve, bend or fold; sinuosidade.^[2][11][12]
2. (nautical) The belly a sail makes when it fills with wind.^[2][12]
3. A woman's breast, mama: amamentar ao seio.^[2][11][1]
4. The bosom, the part of the chest and neck left uncovered; the part of a garment over the chest.^[2][12]
5. The womb: o bebé crescia no seio da mãe.^[2][11][1]
6. (figurative) The innermost part; heart, soul: guardava o segredo no seio.^[2][11]
7. The interior or centre of something: no seio da mata.^[2][11][1]
8. A milieu or community; intimacy: no seio da família.^[2][11]
9. A bay or gulf, enseada.^[2][11][1]
10. (anatomy) A sinus: a cavity in a bone or a wide channel for venous blood.^[2][11]
11. (nautical) The middle part of a rope or cable between its ends; its slack.^[2][11]

Word family

• enseada
• porta-seios

Related words

• cosseno
• seno
• sinuosidade
• sinuoso
• sinusite
• Latin sinus
• Galician seo

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 o p q r s t u v Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. seio
3. ^ a b c d e f g Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. seio
4. ^ 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. seio
5. ^ 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. seio
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ 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. seo
9. ^ a b c d 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, 386
10. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 205
11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. seio
12. ^ a b c 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. seio