tempo

Forms

tempo m (plural tempos)^[1] Houaiss records tenpo from the 13th century and tempo and tẽpo from the 14th.^[2][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin tempus (“time”), written Old Galician-Portuguese tempo and Old Galician-Portuguese tenpo in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1] The Latin word was a neuter in -us;^[4][5] Nascentes and Aurélio explain the Portuguese form through the form tempos, which was felt to be a Portuguese plural, from which a singular was then drawn.^[4][5] Corominas gives the same explanation for the Spanish word, whose expected outcome would have been a singular ending in -s, a type rare in Castilian.^[6]

The same Latin word is Galician tempo, Spanish tiempo, Catalan temps, French temps, Italian tempo and Romanian timp.^[7][1]

The Latin noun is from *tempos (“stretch, measure”), from *tempos (“stretch”), an s-stem whose meaning developed from “what is stretched” to “a stretch of time” and then “time, occasion”.^[8][1] Wiktionary mentions a second proposal, from *temh₁- (“to cut”), “a section of time”.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lorenzo's first record is the will of King Afonso II of 1214: no tempo de mia morte “at the time of my death”.^[9] The cantigas use the word for a stretch of time or a period (em tempo del Rey Artur “in the time of King Arthur”) and for an occasion;^[9] gran tempo á meant “a long time ago”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The Cantigas de Santa Maria already have the word for the season of a task, as in no tenpo quand'os vĩas / vendimian “in the season when they harvest the vines”, and the glossaries list the senses “age” and “duration of a musical part” as well.^[9][10] Houaiss dates the sense “the age in which one lives” to the 13th century and the senses “weather” and “season, proper time” to the 14th.^[2]

Barbosa (1611) renders tempo bom “fair weather” by Latin tempestas.^[11] Morais (1789) lists the senses “delay, respite”, “leisure”, “opportunity” and “season”, as in o tempo das vindimas “the time of the grape harvest”.^[12] Later technical senses are the grammatical “tense”, the musical “beat, tempo”, and in sport each half of a match and the time of a race.^[2]

Timeline

• 1214 – no tempo de mia morte in the will of Afonso II.^[9]
• 13th century – the spelling tenpo; the sense “the age in which one lives”.^[2]
• 14th century – the spellings tempo and tẽpo; the senses “weather” and “season”.^[2]
• c. 1350 – the Trasladação de S. Nicolau (witness of the 14th century), the first CTA text with the word.^[13]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists tempo bom “fair weather”.^[11]
• 1789 – Morais lists a tempo and o tempo das vindimas.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. time, the continuous succession in which events follow one another, as past, present and future.^[2][1][14]
2. A period or era, considered for what happened in it: o tempo das grandes navegações.^[2][1]
3. A period of life; the age in which one lives.^[2]
4. Time available, leisure, opportunity: Não tenho tempo para ler.^[2][1][15]
5. A length of time, especially a long one.^[1][14]
6. weather, the state of the atmosphere: O tempo está a mudar.^[2][1]
7. A season or the proper time for something: o tempo da sementeira.^[2][1]
8. (grammar) tense.^[2][1]
9. (music) A beat; the speed of a piece, andamento.^[2]
10. (sport) Each period into which a match is divided; the time taken in a race.^[2][1]

Interjection

1. (sport) Time out!^[1]

Word family

• tempão
• tempinho
• tempozinho
• meio-tempo
• atempar

Related words

• temperatura
• tempestade
• temporal
• temporalidade
• temporalização
• temporalizar
• temporâneo
• temporário
• temporizar
• temporada
• temporão
• Latin tempus
• Spanish tiempo

Usage notes

Common phrases include a tempo “in time”, matar tempo “to kill time”, ganhar tempo “to gain time” and tempo de vacas magras “lean times”.^[1] Houaiss and Aurélio also record Tempo, with a capital, in Afro-Brazilian religion an inquice of the Angola–Congo pantheon;^[2][5] Houaiss, after Nei Lopes, derives it from a Kikongo word for a violent wind.^[2][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r 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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. tempo
3. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. tempo
4. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. tempo
5. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. tempo
6. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 486
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b c d e 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. tempo
10. ^ 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. tempo
11. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. tempo
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, 449
13. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. tempo
14. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. tempo
15. ^ 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. tempo