soldado

Forms

soldado m or f by sense or (see usage notes) m (plural soldados, feminine soldada, feminine plural soldadas, diminutive soldadinho, augmentative soldadão)^[1] A 15th-century spelling is solldadado; a private letter of 1542 writes solldados.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Italian soldato, first recorded in the 14th century.^[2][5] The Italian word, recorded from 1353, first meant a man who bore arms for pay, a mercenary; it is the past participle of soldare (“to pay a soldier's wage”), from soldo (“pay, money”).^[2][6] That noun goes back to Late Latin solidus (“gold coin”), the classical adjective “solid, massive” used as a noun.^[2]

Cunha separates the senses: the older “hired, paid” belongs with soldar and assoldado, and only the military sense comes from Italian.^[3] Wiktionary and the DLP analyse the word as soldo with the suffix -ado, a calque or imitation of the Italian.^[1][7]

French soldat was borrowed from the same Italian word in 1475.^[8][1] The Latin adjective goes back to Proto-Indo-European *solh₂-i-dʰh₁-o- (“entire”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the noun to the 14th century, when it meant a man of war who served for pay.^[2][3] In a cantiga d'escarnho Afonso Fernandez Cubel complains pero sõo mui pobr' e sen soldado, where the word is glossed as a man in one's pay.^[10][11]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau still defines the soldier in 1712 as a man of war who receives pay from a prince.^[12] In 1813 Morais defines the rank: the lowest class, below the anspeçadas.^[13] The general sense “any member of the armed forces” and the figurative “one who fights for a cause” followed, as in os soldados da fé.^[2][14]

In Brazil the word names a bird, a grasshopper and a fish.^[2][5] Nascentes explains these as allusions to the colours of military uniforms.^[2][5] It also names the defending caste of social insects.^[2]

Portuguese passed the word to the languages of Asia: serdadu in Malay and soldadu in Tetum.^[1] In Brazil it gave surara in Nheengatu.^[1]

Timeline

• 1300s – first record, “a man in someone's pay”.^[2][3]
• 1353 – Houaiss's date for Italian soldato.^[2]
• 1400s – the spelling solldadado.^[2][3]
• 1475 – French borrows soldat from Italian.^[8]
• 1542 – solldados in a private letter.^[4]
• 1569 – Cardoso translates it as Latin miles.^[15]
• 1572 – first record of soldadesco.^[16]
• 1683 – first record of soldadinho.^[17]
• 1712 – Bluteau: a man of war paid by a prince.^[12]
• 1813 – Morais defines the lowest military rank, and records the name of a Brazilian fish.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A soldier: a person enlisted in the army (exército), as a volunteer or by conscription.^[2][14][1]
2. A private: a member of the armed forces without rank;^[2][7][18] soldado raso.^[2][7][18]
3. Any member of the armed forces, especially of the land forces.^[2][18]
4. (historical) A man of war who served for pay; a mercenary (mercenário).^[2][19]
5. (figurative) One who fights for a cause, party or idea; a champion or partisan.^[2][14][1]
6. A toy soldier.^[7]
7. (entomology) A member of the caste that defends a colony of termites or ants.^[2]
8. (Brazil) The name of a South American bird, Cacicus chrysopterus, and of other animals: a grasshopper and a reef fish.^[2][20]

Word family

• soldadesco
• soldadinho
• soldadão

Related words

• soldo
• sólido
• Italian soldato
• Spanish soldado

Usage notes

The adjective soldado “soldered, joined” is the past participle of soldar, recorded in the Cantigas de Santa Maria: log' os ossos foron ben soldados “at once the bones were well knit”.^[10][2] Soldado da paz is a name for a firefighter.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. soldado
3. ^ a b c d e Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. soldar
4. ^ a b 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. soldado
5. ^ a b c Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. soldado
6. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli, p. s.v. soldato
7. ^ a b c d 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. soldado
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. soldat
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b 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. soldado
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. soldado
12. ^ 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. soldado
13. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 716
14. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. soldado
15. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. soldado
16. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. soldadesco
17. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. soldadinho
18. ^ a b c d Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. soldado
19. ^ 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. soldado
20. ^ 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. soldado