tempestade

Forms

tempestade f (plural tempestades)^[1] Houaiss records the 14th-century spellings tepestades, tenpestades and tenpestade.^[2] Feijó (1734) sets the correct tempestade against the spelling tampestade.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin tempestās (“period of time; weather; storm”), with the meaning narrowed to bad weather; the word is written Old Galician-Portuguese tempestade in the oldest texts.^[2][4][5][1]

The same Latin word is Galician tempestade and Spanish tempestad.^[1][6] On the other hand French tempête, Italian tempesta and Catalan tempesta come from Vulgar Latin *tempesta, the feminine of the classical adjective tempestus (“timely”) used as a noun.^[7][8]

The Latin noun is formed from tempus (“time”) with the suffix -tās.^[9][1] Its first sense was “a portion of time, season, occasion”;^[9][5] “weather”, and then “storm”, developed from it.^[9][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantigas de Santa Maria praise the Virgin who coitas nos toll' e tempestades “takes from us troubles and storms” (cantiga 36), and tell how she put out ũa gran tempestade de fogo “a great storm of fire” in Sicily (cantiga 307).^[10] In cantiga 134 the word means more broadly “calamity, affliction”, of a disease that made the sufferers lose their limbs.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Houaiss's 14th-century records already separate “disturbance” from “atmospheric storm”.^[2] Nascentes points out that Camões's Depois de procelosa tempestade (Lusíadas IV, 1) still uses the word for “weather” and is no pleonasm, but the language settled on the sense of bad weather.^[5][8] The dictionaries from Cardoso (1569) to Bluteau render it with Latin procella “storm, squall”, and Bluteau equates it with tormenta.^[11][12][13]

Figurative uses followed: Morais (1789) defines a storm of wind and rough sea and quotes tempestade de armas from a translation of the Aeneid, and his 1813 edition adds a storm of cannon-balls and a storm of business.^[14][15] The idiom tempestade em copo de água “a storm in a glass of water”, a fuss about nothing, and the scientific tempestade magnética “magnetic storm” are recorded by Houaiss.^[2] In Rio Grande do Sul the word is used as a synonym of temporal.^[16]

Timeline

• 13th century – tempestades and tempestade de fogo in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[10]
• 14th century – the spellings tenpestades “disturbance” and tenpestade “storm”.^[2]
• 14th century – tempestade in the Trasladação de S. Nicolau.^[17]
• 1569 – Cardoso renders tempestade with Latin procella.^[11]
• 1734 – Feijó corrects the spelling tampestade.^[3]
• 1789 – Morais records tempestade de armas.^[14]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira quotes Gaspar da Cruz's Tratado das cousas da China on Chinese ships wrecked by storms.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. A storm: a violent disturbance of the atmosphere, often with rain, hail, strong wind, lightning and thunder: A tempestade derrubou várias árvores na avenida.^[2][19][1]
2. A storm at sea, with high waves raised by the wind.^[20][21]
3. (figurative) A sudden, violent noise or outburst.^[2][22]
4. (figurative) Disorder, uproar; a heated quarrel: Uma tempestade rebentou na reunião.^[2][23]
5. (figurative) Great emotional turmoil.^[2][24]
6. (geophysics) In tempestade magnética, a sudden strong disturbance of the Earth's magnetic field caused by solar activity.^[2][23]

Related words

• tempo
• temporal
• Latin tempestās
• Spanish tempestad

Usage notes

Tempestade em copo de água “a storm in a glass of water” is said of a great fuss over a trifle.^[2][19]

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 g h i j k Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. tempestade
3. ^ a b 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. tempestade
4. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. tempestade
5. ^ a b c d Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. tempestade
6. ^ 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. tempestad
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ 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. 489
9. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. tempestās
10. ^ 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. tempestade
11. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. tempestade
12. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. tempestade
13. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. tempestade
14. ^ 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, 449
15. ^ Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 762
16. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. tempestade
17. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. tempestade
18. ^ 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, 691
19. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. tempestade
20. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 8889
21. ^ 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. tempestade
22. ^ 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. tempestade
23. ^ 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. tempestade
24. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. tempestade