tavão

Forms

tavão m (plural tavões or (rare) tavãos)^[1] Older and regional forms are tabão (tabaõ 1721, tabão 1789), atavão and atabão.^[2][1][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin tabānus (“gadfly, horsefly”), written Old Galician-Portuguese tavão in a cantiga d'escarnho.^{[2][4][5][1][6]}

The same Latin word is Galician tabán, Spanish tábano, Catalan tavà, French taon and Romanian tăun; Italian tafano and Occitan tavan point to a variant *tafānus.^[7][1] Corominas notes that Portuguese and Italian keep the Latin stress on the second syllable, while Spanish moved it to the first.^[8]

The Latin word is recorded from Varro on; its origin is unknown.^[9][1] Corominas takes it to be a loan from a non-Indo-European language, and Wiktionary notes the argument, based on proper names, that it is Etruscan.^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest record is a cantiga d'escarnho by Afonso Mendez de Besteiros, in which a man who sees the jinetes behaves come boi que fer tavão “like an ox that a horsefly stings”: he shakes himself, rolls about, lifts his tail and makes off to Portugal.^[10][11] The sources give the song no date.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Barbosa (1611) renders it with Latin tabanus and asilus.^[12] Morais (1813) describes the atabão as a fly that bites and sucks blood.^[3] The original Caldas Aulete names species such as the tavão-besteiro or moscardo-dos-bois, which stings oxen and horses.^[13] Cunha lists among its derivatives tavanês “scatterbrained” (16th century), estabanado and estouvado “rash, reckless” (1813) and atavanado, of a horse's coat (1836).^[4]

The word is now used mainly in Portugal;^[14] Brazil calls the same flies mutuca.^[2][14]

Timeline

• 1611 – Barbosa: Tavão, Latin tabanus.^[12]
• 1624 – Houaiss's first date.^[2]
• 1721 – the spelling tabaõ;^[3] tabão in 1789.^[2]
• 1813 – estabanado and estouvado first recorded;^[3] Morais describes the atabão.^[4][3]
• 1836 – first record of atavanado.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. (zoology) A horsefly, any fly of the family Tabanidae, which plagues cattle and horses and also bites people.^[15][16][1]
2. (Portugal) The same as mutuca.^[2][14]
3. A large fly, Rhaphiorhynchus pictus (mosca-da-madeira).^[2][17]

Word family

• atavanado
• estabanado
• estouvado
• tavanês

Related words

• Latin tabānus
• Galician tabán
• Spanish tábano

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. tavão
3. ^ a b c d e Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 758
4. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. tavão
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. tavão
6. ^ 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. tavão
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8507
8. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tábano
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Universo Cantigas: Glosario da poesía medieval profana galego-portuguesa, A Coruña: Instituto da Lingua e Literatura (ILLA), Universidade da Coruña, https://www.universocantigas.gal, p. s.v. tavão
11. ^ 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
12. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. tavão
13. ^ 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. tavão
14. ^ a b c 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. tavão
15. ^ 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. tavão
16. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 8851
17. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. tavão