sujo

Forms

sujo (feminine suja, masculine plural sujos, feminine plural sujas, comparable, comparative mais sujo, superlative o mais sujo or sujíssimo, diminutive sujinho)^[1] Old Portuguese wrote çujo, çuyo and suzio in the 14th century, and suja, çuio and suzia in the 15th.^[2][3] Galician texts of the same time have suzio and suçio.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sūcidus (“juicy, moist; greasy (of unwashed wool)”), also spelt succidus, and is written Old Galician-Portuguese çujo in the oldest texts.^{[2][3][1][5][6]} Nascentes and Aurélio trace it through the intermediate forms *sucio and *susiu.^[7][8] Meyer-Lübke already posited a Latin sense “dirty” for the word.^[9] Morais (1813) and Michaelis take it instead from the Spanish word.^[10][11]

The Latin adjective is formed from sūcus (“juice, sap”) with the suffix -idus.^[1][12] It was used chiefly of freshly shorn wool, still damp with sweat and grease, which is how it came to mean “dirty” in Romance.^[13][14][12]

The same word is Galician suxo, Spanish sucio and Old Occitan sotz.^[1][9][15]

Earliest recorded meaning

The chronicle of 1344 has seus çujos custumes e da çuja ley “their dirty customs and their dirty law” and o logar era çujo assaz “the place was very dirty”; the Galician Miragres de Santiago speak of evil spirits that are maaos et suçios.^[4] Houaiss and Cunha date the word to the 14th century.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Beside the physical sense, the word was used early of morals: Bluteau (1712–1728) has it for “dishonest, unchaste” and for foul words.^[16] Morais (1813) adds a sea sujo full of islets and reefs, and a book sujo full of misprints.^[10] Modern dictionaries add dishonest dealing, a bad name, an indecent mouth, a hazy horizon and an infected place.^[8][17][11]

In Brazil, as a noun, o sujo or porco sujo is a popular name for the devil, and sujos are carnival revellers dressed in rags.^[17] Regional surveys record a seabed with stones in Portugal, and in Pará the soot of a kitchen.^[18] The Saramaccan word súndju comes from it.^[1]

Timeline

• 1344 – çujos and çujo in the chronicle of that year.^[4]
• c. 1430 – çujo in the Horto do Esposo.^[19]
• 1542 – a private letter has çuja.^[20]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau: “unclean”, and figuratively “dishonest, unchaste”.^[16]
• 1813 – Morais adds the senses of a sea with reefs and of a book full of errors.^[10]

Meanings

Adjective

1. dirty, unclean; covered with dirt (sujeira): O chão da cozinha está sujo.^[2][8][1]
2. Dressed in dirty, stained clothes.^[2]
3. (figurative) dishonest, morally reprehensible: um negócio sujo.^[2][17][5]
4. (figurative) obscene, indecent: boca suja.^[17][6][1]
5. (figurative) Having a bad name or no credit.^[17][11]
6. Full of errors or corrections (of a page or a proof).^[8][11]
7. Hazy (of the horizon); dull (of a colour).^[8][11]

Noun

1. (Brazil, popular) The devil.^[17]
2. (Brazil) A carnival reveller in a costume of rags.^[17]

Word family

• sujeira
• sujidade
• sujamente
• sujar

Related words

• sujismundo
• Spanish sucio
• Galician suxo

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. sujo
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. sujo
4. ^ a b c 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. çujo
5. ^ a b 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. sujo
6. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 8708
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. sujo
8. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. sujo
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. sucidus
10. ^ a b c Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 736
11. ^ a b c d e 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. sujo
12. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. sūcidus
13. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sucio
14. ^ 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. sucio
15. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 324
16. ^ 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. sujo
17. ^ a b c d e f g 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. sujo
18. ^ Instituto da Lingua Galega, Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués (TLPGP), Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/tesouro, p. s.v. sujo
19. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. çujo
20. ^ 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. sujo