surdo

Forms

surdo (feminine surda, masculine plural surdos, feminine plural surdas, comparable, comparative mais surdo, superlative o mais surdo or surdíssimo)^[1] The oldest form is sordo (13th century); surdo is recorded from the 14th.^[2] Nascentes notes that sordo still lives in Beira Alta and Trás-os-Montes.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin surdus (“deaf; muffled”), written Old Galician-Portuguese sordo in the oldest texts.^[2][1][3] The Latin short /u/ gave /o/, as in the dialect form and in the cognates, and Nascentes calls the dialect form the regular outcome and suggests that the standard form took its /u/ from the related word mudo “mute”.^[3][4] The noun for the drum is a shortening of the phrase tambor surdo (“muffled drum”).^[2]

The same Latin word is Galician xordo, Spanish sordo, Catalan sord, French sourd, Italian sordo and Romanian surd.^[5][1] Corominas notes that the Galician initial ⟨x⟩ is usually taken as a spontaneous palatalisation.^[6]

The origin of the Latin adjective is unclear.^[7] Walde–Hofmann and Pokorny put it under the root *swer- (“to sound”), which Wiktionary follows, but de Vaan objects that this leaves the meaning unexplained, since the word means “not heard” or “not hearing”; he considers it possible, though very speculative, that the sense “deaf” came from absurdus (“out of tune, absurd”).^[7][1] The OLD compares susurrus (“whisper”).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the adjective in the sense “who cannot hear” to the 13th century, from Cunha, in the form sordo.^[2] The Miragres de Santiago say of the saint that he da aos sordos oydo “gives hearing to the deaf”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The sense “faint, muffled” of a sound is dated by Houaiss to 1552.^[2] Morais (1789) records voga surda, rowing so that the oars are not heard, lima surda “silent file”, and pela surda “imperceptibly”, and Vieira adds marchar às surdas “to march in silence” and nau surda ao leme, a ship that does not answer the helm.^[10][11] Bluteau notes the legal term testemunho surdo, the evidence of absent or dead witnesses.^[12]

Figurative senses “unmoved, indifferent”, “secret, hidden” (uma guerra surda) and “dull” of colours are in the modern dictionaries, and phonetics uses the adjective for voiceless sounds such as /p/, /t/, /f/ and /s/.^[2][13] In Brazil the noun names the large bass drum of the samba schools.^[2][14][1]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, spelt sordo.^[2]
• 14th century – the spelling surdo.^[2]
• c. 1430 – the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437) has surdo.^[15]
• 1552 – first record of the sense “faint, muffled”.^[2]
• 1569 – Cardoso translates it with Latin surdus.^[16]
• 1789 – Morais records voga surda and pela surda.^[10]

Meanings

Adjective

1. deaf: unable to hear, or hard of hearing; mouco.^[2][13][1]
2. Unwilling to listen; indifferent, unmoved: continuou surdo aos pedidos da mãe.^[2][13][1]
3. Of a sound, faint, muffled: ouviu-se uma pancada surda.^[2][13][1]
4. Done silently or in secret; hidden: um ressentimento surdo.^[2][13]
5. Of a colour or painting, dull, without lustre.^[2][13]
6. (phonetics) voiceless: produced without vibration of the vocal cords.^[2][13][1]
7. (nautical) Not answering, of a ship and its helm; silent, of tackle.^[2][13]

Noun

1. A deaf person.^[2][17][1]
2. (music) A large bass drum with a muffled sound, used in samba; short for tambor surdo.^[2][14][1]

Word family

• surdez
• surdamente
• ensurdecer
• surdo-mudo

Related words

• absurdo
• Latin surdus
• Galician xordo
• Spanish sordo

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o 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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. surdo
3. ^ a b c Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. surdo
4. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. s.v. surdo
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 310
7. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. surdus
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. sordo
10. ^ 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, 433
11. ^ 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, 635
12. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. surdo
13. ^ a b c d e f g h Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. surdo
14. ^ a b 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. surdo
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. surdo
16. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. surdo
17. ^ 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. surdo