sorvete

Forms

sorvete m (plural sorvetes)^[1] Bluteau (1720) writes sorvête and Feijó (1734) sorvéte; the spelling sorvete is recorded from 1789.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French sorbet.^[2][5][6][7] Houaiss thinks the French word probably reached Portuguese with the help of Italian sorbetto, and Michaelis takes the Portuguese word from the Italian one, while Aurélio and the Porto Editora dictionary name both.^{[2][8][9][10]} The ⟨v⟩ in place of ⟨b⟩ may be due to sorver (“to sip”), as Nascentes and Aurélio suggest.^[11][9]

The French word, recorded from 1544, is borrowed from the Italian one, which is from Ottoman Turkish شربت (şerbet, “sweet cold drink”).^[12][1] Houaiss and the DLE see in the Italian word the influence of sorbire (“to sip”).^[2][13] The Turkish word is from Persian شربت (šarbat), and that from Arabic شربة (šarba, “a drink”), from شرب (šariba, “to drink”).^[1] Cunha and Houaiss name the Arabic noun for “drink” of the same root instead, and Corriente a word for “a portion of drink”.^[5][2][14] Cunha compares xarope, from the same Arabic root.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Bluteau's Vocabulario (1720) describes sorvête as a drink made with rock sugar, lemon juice and powdered pearl, coral and gold, with a little amber and musk.^[3][2] He offers two explanations: that it is so called because it is sipped (se sorve) with snow in hot weather, or that it comes from a Turkish and Persian word for “drink”.^[3] Feijó (1734) glosses it simply as “a drink”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Morais (1813) still defines it as a fruit syrup kept to be dissolved in water and drunk, and as the scented lemonade of the Turks.^[15] French had used sorbet for an iced dessert since 1782, and the original Caldas Aulete defines the Portuguese word as a confection of fruit juice, cream or milk with syrup, frozen to look like snow.^[2][12][16]

In Brazil, and in Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Mozambique, sorvete is the ordinary word for ice cream, while in Portugal the usual word is gelado.^[2][10][9] In Portugal sorvete is also a variety of pear, in Bahia a variety of mango, and in popular speech a slap.^[2][6][10] The word passed into Hunsrik, the German dialect of southern Brazil.^[1]

Timeline

• 1544 – French sorbet is first recorded, for a cold drink.^[12]
• 1581 – Italian sorbetto, in a Venetian ambassador's report on a Turkish drink of water and sugar.^[17]
• 1720 – Bluteau describes sorvête as a drink.^[3][2]
• 1734 – Feijó glosses sorvéte as “a drink”.^[4]
• 18th century – Cunha's first record.^[5]
• 1789 – the spelling sorvete.^[2]
• 1813 – Morais describes the Turkish lemonade.^[15]
• 1858 – first record of sorveteira.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. (chiefly Brazil, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Mozambique) ice cream: a frozen dessert of fruit juice, or of milk or cream flavoured with chocolate and the like: um sorvete de manga.^[2][9][1]
2. A sorbet; an iced fruit drink, to which champagne or rum may be added.^[2][1]
3. A lemonade drunk by the Turks.^[2][6]
4. (Bahia, agriculture) A variety of mango.^[2][16]
5. (Portugal, agriculture) A variety of pear.^[2][7]
6. (Portugal, popular) A slap.^[6][10]

Word family

• sorveteira
• sorveteiro
• sorveteria

Related words

• xarope
• French sorbet
• Italian sorbetto
• Spanish sorbete

Usage notes

Virar sorvete means “to vanish, to disappear”.^[2][9] Houaiss marks the stressed vowel as closed, /ê/.^[2]

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. sorvete
3. ^ a b c d Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. sorvête
4. ^ a b c Feijó, João de Morais Madureira (1734), Orthographia, ou Arte de escrever, e pronunciar com acerto a lingua portugueza, Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. sorvete
5. ^ a b c d e Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. sorvete
6. ^ 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. sorvete
7. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. sorvete
8. ^ 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. sorvete
9. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. sorvete
10. ^ a b c d Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 8638
11. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. sorvete
12. ^ a b c Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. sorbet
13. ^ Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. sorbete
14. ^ 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. sorbete
15. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 726
16. ^ 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. sorvete
17. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli, p. s.v. sorbetto