sul

Forms

sul m (plural suis)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French sud, written Old Galician-Portuguese sur in the oldest texts.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} Cunha takes it rather from su, the older form of the French word.^[6] The French word was borrowed around 1138 from Old English sūþ, the source of the English word south.^[7][2][6][1] Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Germanic *sunþrą.^[1] The DHLF mentions a possible link with a root for “sun”, the south being the side of the sun.^[7]

Nascentes and the Aurélio explain the final ⟨l⟩ from old compounds such as suleste and suloeste, in which an article had fused with the second part.^[4][8][2] Silva Bastos derived the word from German.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantigas de Santa Maria have vento de sur “south wind”.^[3] Lorenzo's chronology dates sur to 1128, and quotes a stream called Sur in a Latin charter of 1107.^[3] Houaiss records sul from the 15th century.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The first Portuguese–Latin dictionaries define sul as a wind: Cardoso (1569) glosses it Eurus and Barbosa (1611) Auster, and Morais (1789) still has “wind blowing from the opposite side to the north”.^[10][11][12] In the Portuguese East o Sul meant the lands reached by sailing south from Goa: Kanara, Malabar, Coromandel and the Malay world.^[13] In Brazil o Sul is the macroregion of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, and in Rio Grande do Sul it once meant the province itself.^[2][1][14]

Timeline

• 1107 – a stream called Sur in a Latin charter.^[3]
• 1128 – Lorenzo's date for sur.^[3]
• 1200s – vento de sur in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[3]
• 1400s – Houaiss's first record of sul.^[2]
• 1496 – sul in the Regimento proveitoso contra a pestenença.^[15]
• 1500 – Cunha's date.^[6]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses sul as a wind.^[10]
• 1591 – a royal letter speaks of the goods that come “from China and the South”.^[13]
• 1789 – Morais defines it as the wind opposite the north.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. south, the cardinal point opposite north.^[2][8][5]
2. The south pole.^[2][8]
3. The southern part of a country or region: o sul de Angola.^[2][5]
4. (Brazil, with a capital) The South Region of Brazil: Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.^[2][1]
5. The south wind.^[8][5][16]

Adjective

1. Southern; of, from or towards the south: latitude sul.^[2][5][16]

Word family

• sudeste
• sudoeste
• sulano
• sulino
• sulista

Related words

• norte
• leste
• oeste
• French sud
• English south

Usage notes

The plural is suis.^[16][1] Brazilian Portuguese pronounces the final -l as /w/, European Portuguese as a velarised /l/.^[1]

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 i j k Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. sul
3. ^ a b c d e f 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. sur
4. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. sul
5. ^ a b c d e 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. sul
6. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. sul
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. sud
8. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. sul
9. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. sul
10. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. sul
11. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. sul
12. ^ a b 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, 429
13. ^ a b Dalgado, Sebastião Rodolfo (1919–1921), Glossário luso-asiático, 2 vols., Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, p. 2, 324
14. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. sul
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. sul
16. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. sul