urso

Forms

urso m (plural ursos, feminine ursa, feminine plural ursas)^[1] The medieval forms are usso (13th century), husso and osso;^[2][3] urso is recorded from the 14th century.^[2][3] Bluteau heads the word urso, ou usso, and Morais in 1813 still refers urso to usso.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin ursus (“bear”), though not in its regular form.^[3][2][6] The oldest form is Old Galician-Portuguese usso, which Wiktionary derives from Vulgar Latin *ussus; the medieval texts also write Old Galician-Portuguese husso and Old Galician-Portuguese osso.^[1][2][3] Wiktionary calls it a learned borrowing of the Latin word that displaced the inherited form, and Corominas calls it semi-learned.^[1][7] Nascentes explains it as a reshaping of the old form with /o/, made to keep it apart from osso “bone”, a view he takes from Leite de Vasconcelos.^[8][9]

The same Latin word is Galician oso, Spanish oso, Catalan os, French ours, Italian orso and Romanian urs.^[10][1]

The Latin noun comes from Proto-Italic *orsos and Proto-Indo-European *h₂ŕ̥tḱos (“bear”), the source also of Ancient Greek ἄρκτος (árktos, “bear”) and Old Irish art (“bear”).^[1][11] De Vaan explains the Latin cluster /rs/ as the outcome of the Proto-Indo-European /rtḱ/.^[11] The Germanic, Baltic and Slavic languages replaced the old word with new ones, which the DHLF puts down to taboos on naming the animal.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

A cantiga has the form usso in que s'aventura / a un grand'usso matar “who ventures to kill a great bear”.^[13] Nascentes cites the Inquisitiones for an early osso “bear”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Usso stayed in use for centuries: the treatise Do Dia do Juízo has it about 1446, and Bernardes still wrote ussos in O Lima.^[14][9] Only in Vieira's dictionary of 1871–1874 is urso the main form and usso a cross-reference to it.^[15]

The figurative senses “unsociable, gruff man” and “ugly man” are in the older Aulete.^[16] Silva Bastos in 1912 records Coimbra student slang urso “prize-winning student”, still used in Portugal for the best student of a class, and a Bahian sense “hired agent of murderers”.^[17][18][19] Brazil also uses it for the hairy caterpillars of certain moths and for group 23 of the jogo do bicho, and recent slang for a big, hairy gay man.^{[3][6][19][1]}

Timeline

• 13th century – usso in a cantiga.^[13][2]
• 14th century – first records of urso, husso and osso.^[2][3]
• c. 1446 – usso in Do Dia do Juízo.^[14]
• 1697 – Pereira heads the word Urso.^[20]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau gives urso, ou usso.^[4]
• 1813 – Morais refers urso to usso.^[5]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira makes urso the main form.^[15]
• 1912 – Silva Bastos records the student sense and the Bahian sense.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bear, a large mammal of the family Ursidae: o urso-pardo.^[3][6][1]
2. (figurative) An unsociable, gruff person; a misanthrope.^[3][19][1]
3. (figurative) An ugly or ungainly man; a very hairy man.^[3][16][18]
4. A person who is the butt of mockery.^[3][6]
5. (Brazil) The hairy caterpillar of certain moths.^[6][3][1]
6. (Brazil) In the jogo do bicho, group 23.^[3][16]
7. (Portugal, student slang) The best student of a class.^[18][19][1]
8. (slang) A large, hairy gay man, a bear.^[19][1]
9. A false friend.^[21]

Adjective

1. (informal, derogatory) Rude, ill-mannered; unsociable.^[22]

Word family

• ursada
• ursinho
• amigo-urso
• urso-branco
• urso-pardo
• urso-polar
• urso-formigueiro

Related words

• ursino
• ursídeo
• Latin ursus
• Spanish oso

Usage notes

Bluteau derived the word from the Latin uri “to burn”, because he thought the animal very lustful; this is not the accepted etymology.^[4][11]

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 Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. urso
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. urso
4. ^ a b c Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. urso
5. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 821
6. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. urso
7. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 319
8. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. urso
9. ^ a b c Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 517
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9089
11. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. ours
13. ^ 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. usso
14. ^ a b Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. usso
15. ^ a b 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, 865
16. ^ a b c 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. urso
17. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. urso
18. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 9338
19. ^ a b c d e Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. urso
20. ^ Pereira, Bento (1697), Thesouro da lingoa portuguesa, in the 1697 edition of his Prosodia (1st ed. 1647; CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. urso
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. urso
22. ^ 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. urso