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verão

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Etymology and origin of the Portuguese word verão

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
1200s More words from the 13th century
Inherited from
Latin *veranum
Ultimate origin
Proto-Indo-European *wósr̥

Pronunciation

  • Brazil: /veˈɾɐ̃w̃/, [veˈɾɐ̃ʊ̯̃][1]
  • Portugal: /vɨˈɾɐ̃w̃/[1]
  • Northern, Portugal: /bɨˈɾɐ̃w̃/[1]

Forms

verão m (plural verões or (dated) verãos)[1] The 14th century spells it ueerãão.[2] The plural is verões or verãos.[3][4][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *vērānum (“springtime”), short for *tempus vērānum (“spring time”), written Old Galician-Portuguese verão in the oldest texts.[2][5][6][1] The Vulgar Latin adjective is formed on vēr (“spring”) with the suffix -ānus.[2][1] Silva Bastos (1912) took the word as a borrowing from Spanish, a view the later dictionaries do not follow.[7][2]

The same word is Galician verán and Spanish verano, first recorded in 1032.[8][1] Romanian vară “summer” comes from the Latin noun itself.[9][1]

The Latin noun goes back to *wezor and Proto-Indo-European *wósr̥ (“spring”).[1] De Vaan reconstructs a neuter r/n-stem meaning “spring”, with cognates in Sanskrit and Avestan.[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the word to the 13th century.[2] In the troubadour lyric it is the fine season, spring and the first part of summer: Rodrigu' Eanes Redondo mocks a man who wears his gilt shoes sempre en verão and in winter too.[11][12] The Crónica Troiana describes the coming of verão, when the meadows turn green and the trees are in leaf.[11]

Semantic evolution

The word first meant the end of spring and the beginning of summer;[2][8] Houaiss reports Corominas's view that Portuguese, like Spanish, long kept three terms, primavera for early spring, verão for late spring and early summer and estio for high summer.[2][8] Morais (1789) defines verão as the season after spring, but his 1813 edition adds that people commonly call verão what is estio and confuse it with spring, and Vieira (1871–1874) still gives it the months of March, April and May.[13][14][15] Today it is the hottest season, the same as estio.[2][6]

In northern and north-eastern Brazil and Amazonia verão is the dry season, whenever it falls.[2][16][17] The name is also given to a red-plumaged bird of the tyrant-flycatcher family, Pyrocephalus rubinus, that appears in the warm months.[2][18]

Timeline

  • 1200s – first record.[2]
  • 1300s – the spelling ueerãão.[2]
  • 1513 – verão in the Livro dos Mártires.[19]
  • 1569 – Cardoso glosses it with the Latin ver “spring”.[20]
  • 1813 – Morais notes that verão is commonly used for estio.[14]
  • 1871–1874 – Vieira still assigns it March, April and May.[15]

Meanings

Noun

  1. summer, the hottest season, between spring and autumn.[2][6][1]
  2. By extension, any period of hot, dry weather.[17][4][21]
  3. (northern and north-eastern Brazil) The dry season.[2][16][17]
  4. (ornithology) A red-plumaged flycatcher, Pyrocephalus rubinus.[2][17][18]

Word family

  • veranico
  • veraneio
  • veranear

Usage notes

Verão de São Martinho is the spell of warm days around Saint Martin's day, 11 November.[4][21][22]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. verão
  3. ^ 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. verão
  4. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. verão
  5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. verão
  6. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. verão
  7. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. verão
  8. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. verano
  9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9213
  10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. vēr
  11. ^ a b 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. verão
  12. ^ 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. verão
  13. ^ 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, 18
  14. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 842
  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, 910
  16. ^ a b Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. verão
  17. ^ a b c d 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. verão
  18. ^ a b Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. verão
  19. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. verão
  20. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. verão
  21. ^ 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. verão
  22. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 9441

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Verão.” Etymologically, 15 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/pt/ver%C3%A3o. Accessed 16 Nov. 2026.

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