trufa

Forms

trufa f (plural trufas)^[1] The 15th century spelt the word trupha, plural truphaaes.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French truffe (“truffle”), which is from Old Occitan trufa.^[2][4][5][6] The Occitan word comes from Late Latin tufera of the glosses, from tufer, a dialectal variant of Latin tuber (“swelling, lump; a kind of tuber”).^[2][7] Houaiss calls the variant with ⟨-f-⟩ Osco-Umbrian.^[2] The Latin word meant a swelling or tumour, and with a word for “earth” it named an underground growth, perhaps the truffle.^[7][8] De Vaan compares other words of the shape ⟨tup-⟩ or ⟨tub-⟩ for a swelling, such as Ancient Greek τύφη (túphē) and Old Norse þúfa (“knoll”);^[9][1] Wiktionary traces it, through *tūβos, to Proto-Indo-European *tewh₂- (“to swell”), a step de Vaan doubts.^[9][1]

The same Occitan word is Spanish trufa, whose sense “truffle” is recorded only in 1766, three centuries after the sense “joke, fib”.^[10][11] Nascentes notes that the REW does not list a Portuguese outcome of the Latin word, and García de Diego gives the native Portuguese form as túbara.^[12][13]

The older sense “mockery, trick” is recorded in Portuguese long before the fungus.^[2][3] Houaiss treats it as the same word: the French word meant “mockery, lie” from 1174–1187 and the Occitan one had that sense about 1225, perhaps because truffles are so hard to find that they seem to mock their hunters.^[2] Cunha instead gives this sense an article of its own and derives it from Late Latin trufa (“deceit”), a Late Latin word that Niermeyer and Du Cange also record.^[3][14][15] The DLP and Michaelis take it from the Spanish word.^[6][16]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the word to the 14th century from the slips of the medieval Portuguese index, and Cunha's addenda give a 14th-century record in the Orto do Esposo; both have the sense “mockery, deceit”.^[2][3] The 15th-century spellings trupha and truphaaes have the same sense.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The old sense “mockery, joke, lie” is marked as archaic in the original Caldas Aulete, which takes it from Spanish.^[17] In the sense of the fungus the word is a later borrowing from French: Silva Bastos defines it in 1912 as a genus of edible underground fungi, and Houaiss cites trufeira, a piece of ground where truffles are found, from Aulete's dictionary of 1881.^[18][19] Aurélio and Priberam give túbera as a synonym.^[5][20]

From the fungus came the chocolate sweet, French truffes au chocolat from 1935, and by resemblance the tip of a dog's nose, a sense Houaiss dates to 1933.^[2] In northern Portugal the chocolate truffle is also a small sweet like a brigadeiro.^[21] Regional Portugal uses trufa for a pad of rags carried under a load, in the Minho the pad on which the ox yoke rests.^[6][22]

Timeline

• 14th century – the sense “mockery” in the Orto do Esposo.^[3][2]
• 15th century – the spellings trupha and truphaaes.^[2][3]
• 1881 – Aulete's dictionary records trufeira “ground where truffles grow”; it gives trufa itself only in the old sense “mockery, lie”.^[19][17]
• 1912 – Silva Bastos defines trufa as an edible underground fungus.^[18]
• 1933 – first record of the sense “tip of a dog's nose”.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (archaic) mockery, ridicule.^[2][3]
2. (archaic) A cunning lie; a trick or embuste.^[2][16]
3. (mycology) A truffle: the dark, edible underground fruiting body of fungi of the genus Tuber; also called túbera.^[2][5][1]
4. (cooking) A chocolate truffle, a small ball of chocolate melted with butter or cream, often rolled in cocoa.^[2][22][1]
5. The tip of a dog's muzzle.^[2]
6. (Portugal, regional) A pad of rags, a rodilha.^[6][20]

Word family

• trufeira

Related words

• trufar
• trufeiro
• túbera
• tubérculo
• French truffe
• Spanish trufa

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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. trufa
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. trufa
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. trufa
5. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. trufa
6. ^ a b c d 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. trufa
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. truffe
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. tuber
9. ^ 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
10. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 677
11. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. trufa
12. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 511
13. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. tuber
14. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. trufa
15. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre, p. s.v. trufa
16. ^ 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. trufa
17. ^ a b 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. trufa
18. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. trufa
19. ^ a b Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. trufeira
20. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. trufa
21. ^ Wikcionário (Portuguese Wiktionary), pt.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. trufa
22. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 9237