ser

Forms

ser (first-person singular present sou, first-person singular preterite fui, past participle sido)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote the infinitive seer, of two syllables, beside ser; the present was sõo or son, é (also est and este), somos, sodes and son.^[2] Houaiss records the subjunctive spelt seia in 1044 and syha in 1289, and sia in the 15th century.^[3]

Etymology

The verb has two Latin sources, and the dictionaries weigh them differently.^[3][1] In Houaiss, Cunha, Nascentes and Aurélio it is inherited from Latin sedeō (“to sit, be seated”), merged with forms of esse (“to be”): the verb for sitting weakened to “to stay, be (somewhere)” and then to “to be”.^[3][4][5][6] Wiktionary instead takes the infinitive Old Galician-Portuguese ser from Medieval Latin essere, the Latin infinitive remade with the ending of the other verbs, and has it absorb the old Old Galician-Portuguese seer, the continuation of the verb “to sit”, along the way.^[1]

Corominas's account of the Spanish verb divides the forms in the same way for both languages: most of them continue the Latin verb “to be”, while the future, the conditional, the present subjunctive, the imperative and the non-finite forms come from the verb “to sit”, which in Spanish and Portuguese weakened to a synonym of “to stay” and then of “to be”.^[7] Wiktionary also traces the subjunctive seja to the old verb for sitting, its /ʒ/ reflecting the /dj/ of sedeat.^[1] The present sou continues *sonō and sois continues *sutis, a form made on the model of the other persons.^[1][2] Carolina Michaëlis explained the old Old Galician-Portuguese sõo as the Latin first person with an added -o, the mark of the first person, and Old Galician-Portuguese é as the Latin third person with the regular loss of final -t.^[2]

Nascentes summed up the older debate in 1955.^[8] Diez had already seen that the verb for sitting had mixed with the verb “to be”; the old infinitive was usually the two-syllable form, like Old Galician-Portuguese veer from videō (“to see”), and the short form appears in the 13th century, first in the future and the conditional.^[8] Cortesão derived the long form from the verb “to sit” and the short one from the remade infinitive, while Ribeiro de Vasconcelos denied that the long form came from the verb “to sit” at all.^[8]

The same merger produced Galician ser, Spanish ser and Old Spanish seer; elsewhere the remade infinitive survives, as in Italian essere, Catalan ésser and Old French estre, and the verb “to sit” keeps its own sense, as in French seoir and Catalan seure.^[1][9][10] The Latin verb “to be” goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₁ésti (“is”), its forms in f- to *bʰúHt (“became”); the verb for sitting goes back to *sed- (“to sit”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the verb to 938, citing Machado, with the form sudes, and records seia in 1044.^[3] In the 13th-century cantigas and documents the verb already links a subject with a quality, but it also means “to be (somewhere)”, “to exist” and “to happen”: the Cancioneiro da Ajuda often has é where modern Portuguese would say está, as in u é mia senhor “where my lady is”.^[2] The old sense “to sit” still appears in Galician-Portuguese prose: the Crónica Troiana has aly seedo “sitting there” and sia sobre hũ caualo “he sat on a horse”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Notarial documents still write the infinitive seer in the late 14th century, as in a Noia charter of 1376.^[2] The sense “to be (in a place or state)”, shared with estar, was gradually left to that verb: Houaiss records ser in the sense of estar from the 13th century, but as rare today.^[3] Barbosa's dictionary of 1611 still glosses the word “to be, or to stay”.^[11] In modern Portuguese ser expresses lasting qualities, identity, origin, possession and time, and forms the passive, while estar takes passing states.^[1][3]

The nominalised infinitive, o ser “being”, is dated by Houaiss to the 15th century.^[3] Pereira (1697) glosses it as “being, or essence”, and Folqman (1755) gives it as a philosophical noun, “essence”.^[12][13] Bluteau calls ser the substantive and auxiliary verb.^[14] In philosophy the noun renders the Being of Parmenides, Aristotle, the scholastics and Heidegger.^[3]

Timeline

• 938 – Houaiss's first date, the form sudes, from Machado.^[3]
• 1044 – the subjunctive seia.^[3]
• 1228 – alguun ser culpado “someone to be guilty” in a document quoted in the DDGM.^[2]
• 13th century – the verb in Galician-Portuguese texts, with the infinitives seer and ser.^[4][8]
• 1289 – the subjunctive spelt syha.^[3]
• 1376 – seer still the infinitive in a notarial document of Noia.^[2]
• c. 1430 – the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437) uses ser.^[15]
• 15th century – first record of the noun ser “being”.^[3]
• 1611 – Barbosa glosses Ser, ou estar.^[11]
• 1697 – Pereira glosses the noun Ser, ou essencia.^[12]
• 1755 – Folqman gives ser as a noun in philosophy.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. To be: links the subject to a quality, especially one that is lasting or defining, as opposed to estar: O ferro é duro.^[3][1][16]
2. To be (identical with, or a member of a class): Lisboa é a capital de Portugal.^[3][1]
3. (auxiliary) Forms the passive voice with a past participle: A carta foi escrita ontem.^[1][6]
4. (impersonal) Tells the time or the date: São cinco horas.^[1][17]
5. (with de) To come from (a place): Ela é do Porto.^[1]
6. (with de) To belong to: Este livro é do meu irmão.^[1]
7. To happen, take place: A reunião vai ser no sábado.^[1][18]
8. To be worth, to cost: Quanto é?^[1]
9. (rare) To be (somewhere or in some state), now said with estar.^[3]
10. (poetic) To exist.^[1]

Noun

1. A being: anything that exists, or is supposed to exist: os seres vivos.^[3][19][1]
2. A person, an individual.^[3][19]
3. The inner nature of a person; essence.^[3]
4. Existence, the fact of being.^[3]
5. (philosophy) Being: what a thing truly is, or what has real existence; in some systems the one primordial reality.^[3]

Related words

• estar
• essência
• ente
• Latin sum
• Latin sedeō
• Galician ser

Usage notes

Portuguese divides English “to be” between ser, for qualities taken as lasting or defining, and estar, for states taken as passing: ele é alegre “he is a cheerful person”, ele está alegre “he is cheerful now”.^[1] Houaiss notes that as a linking verb ser is often regarded as empty of meaning, its sense lying in the predicate.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. seer
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. ser
4. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. ser
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. ser
6. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. ser
7. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ser
8. ^ a b c d Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 465
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. sedere
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. seoir
11. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. ser
12. ^ a b 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. ser
13. ^ a b Folqman, Carlos (1755), Diccionario portuguez, e latino, Lisboa: Régia Officina Silviana (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. ser
14. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. ser
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. ser
16. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. ser
17. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 8428
18. ^ 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. ser
19. ^ 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. ser