som

Forms

som m (plural sons)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote son, sõo, som and soom, with the plural sõõs; the 15th century has ssoo.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sonus (“sound, noise”), written Old Galician-Portuguese son in the oldest texts.^[2][3][4][1] Wiktionary adds that the Galician-Portuguese word was probably influenced by, or possibly borrowed from, Old Occitan son, the word for the melody of a song, and mentions another view that takes it as a back-formation from Portuguese soar.^[1]

The same Latin word is Galician son, Spanish son, Old Spanish sueno, Catalan so, French son, Italian suono and Sardinian sonu.^[5][6][1]

The Latin noun belongs with sonō (“to sound”).^[7] Wiktionary traces it to *swonos and *swónh₂os, from the root *swenh₂- (“to sound”), and compares Proto-Germanic *swanaz.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates son to the 13th century from Cunha's slips of medieval Portuguese.^[2] In the troubadour lyric som is above all the melody of a song: Martim Soares mocks a rival's cantigas with vosso som, and João Garcia de Guilhade praises a friend who fez-lhi bom som “made a good tune for it”.^[8] The glossary of the cantigas d'amigo gives “music, melody, tune”, and the Crónica Troiana speaks of a song and its sound tã doçe et tã saboroso “so sweet and so delightful”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

From the melody of a song the word spread to any sound: Pereira (1697) glosses it with the Latin sonus and sonitus, and Folqman (1755) has the phrase ao som da viola “to the sound of the guitar”.^[10][11] Vieira (1871–1874) opposes the regular vibrations of a som to the confused ones of a ruído “noise”, and the physical definition, a vibration carried through an elastic medium, is in Aulete and the modern dictionaries.^[12][13][14]

In Brazil the word has come to mean “music”, especially popular music, and “sound system, stereo”.^[13][1] In Fortaleza a som is a funk party.^[15]

Timeline

• 1200s – first record, spelt son.^[2][3]
• 1300s – the spellings som and soom.^[2]
• c. 1400 – som in a fragment of the Flos Sanctorum kept at Santiago de Compostela.^[16]
• 1697 – Pereira glosses it sonus, sonitus.^[10]
• 1755 – Folqman has ao som da viola.^[11]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira contrasts som with ruído.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. Anything that can be heard; a sound, noise.^[2][17][1]
2. (physics) A vibration that travels through an elastic medium and can be perceived by the ear.^[2][17][14]
3. (phonetics) A sound made by the voice, simple or articulated.^[18][19]
4. A tune, melody; the sound of an instrument: dançar ao som da guitarra.^[18][11]
5. (Brazil, informal) music, especially popular music.^[13][1]
6. (Brazil, informal) A stereo or other sound system.^[13][1]
7. (figurative) Manner, way.^[18][20]

Word family

• sonzinho
• sonzão
• sonzeira

Related words

• soante
• soar
• sonante
• sónico
• sonoridade
• sonoro
• ressoar
• Latin sonus
• Galician son

Usage notes

The phrase sem tom nem som means “without rhyme or reason”, and ao som de “to the accompaniment of”.^[18] Houaiss gives the Brazilian sense “sound system” a separate article, as a clipping of aparelho de som “sound apparatus”.^[2]

Separate words spelt som are the name of the currency of Kyrgyzstan, in Aurélio and the DLP, and the old form som of sou “I am”, which Morais (1789) records.^[17][14][21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. som
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. som
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. som
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8090
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. sonus
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. sonus
8. ^ Lopes, Graça Videira; Ferreira, Manuel Pedro et al. (2011–), Cantigas Medievais Galego-Portuguesas [online database], Lisboa: Instituto de Estudos Medievais, FCSH/NOVA, https://cantigas.fcsh.unl.pt, p. s.v. som
9. ^ 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. som
10. ^ 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. som
11. ^ a b c Folqman, Carlos (1755), Diccionario portuguez, e latino, Lisboa: Régia Officina Silviana (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. som
12. ^ a b Vieira, Frei Domingos (1871–1874), Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da lingua portugueza, 5 vols., Porto: Ernesto Chardron e Bartholomeu H. de Moraes, p. 5, 581
13. ^ a b c d 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. som
14. ^ 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. som
15. ^ Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. som
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. som
17. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. som
18. ^ a b c d Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. som
19. ^ 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. som
20. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. som
21. ^ 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, 416