vestido

Forms

vestido m (plural vestidos)^[1] Houaiss records the spellings vestidos and uestidos in the 14th century and uestido and uistido in the 15th; the adjective was also written vistido.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin vestītus (“clothing, dress”), a noun of the fourth declension, written Old Galician-Portuguese vestido in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1] Houaiss and Priberam take it from this noun, while the DLP and Porto Editora derive it from the past participle of the Latin verb vestiō (“to dress”), which is also the source of the Portuguese adjective meaning “dressed”.^[2][3][4][5]

The same Latin noun is Spanish vestido, Italian vestito, Catalan vestit and Occitan vestit.^[6][1]

The Latin noun is formed from the verb with the suffix of action nouns -tus.^[7] The verb is derived from vestis (“clothes”), which goes back to *westis and *wéstis, from the root *wes- (“to be dressed”).^[8][1] De Vaan compares Hittite and Luwian verbs for “to wear” and a Sanskrit verb meaning “wears”.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the noun to the 13th century and the adjective to the 14th.^[2] In the cantigas the noun appears in the pairing vestid’e calçado “clothing and footwear”, and the satirical cantigas use the participle of a man who goes about vestid’ e loução “well dressed and smart”.^[9][10] The Crónica Troiana has the plural for a person's clothes: deytey logo as mãos en meus vestidos et rrompi os fasta os peytos “I at once put my hands to my clothes and tore them down to the breast”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The medieval word meant any garment or clothing in general, and the dictionaries of Cardoso, Barbosa and Pereira gloss it with Latin vestiarium, vestis and vestitus.^[11][12][13] Barbosa's 1611 dictionary already has vestido de doo “mourning clothes”.^[12] Morais in 1789 still explains hum vestido as a man's suit of coat, waistcoat and breeches, and separately hum vestido de mulher, made of the usual pieces of a woman's clothing.^[14]

Cunha dates the sense “woman's garment” to 1813.^[15] The original Caldas Aulete describes it as a woman's garment of a skirt joined at the waist to a bodice or made in one piece with it, and this is the main sense today, while the general sense “garment” is now marked as disused by the DLP.^[16][4][2] The figurative sense “covering”, as of grass over a field, is recorded by Houaiss and Aurélio.^[2][17]

Timeline

• 13th century – first record of the noun, according to Houaiss.^[2]
• 14th century – first record of the adjective “dressed”; spellings vestidos and uestidos.^[2]
• c. 1430 – the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437) has vestido.^[18]
• 1556 – a private letter writes vestydos.^[19]
• 1569 – Cardoso's dictionary glosses vestido as Latin vestiarium.^[11]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists vestido de doo “mourning clothes”.^[12]
• 1789 – Morais distinguishes a man's vestido (coat, waistcoat and breeches) from a vestido de mulher.^[14]
• 1813 – first record of the sense “woman's dress”, according to Cunha.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A dress: a woman's or girl's garment covering the body from the shoulders to the legs, in one piece or with a joined bodice and skirt: Ela comprou um vestido azul para a festa.^[2][3][1]
2. (dated) A garment; clothing in general, the same as veste.^[2][4][1]
3. (figurative) Something that covers or clothes a thing, a covering.^[2][17]

Adjective

1. dressed, clothed; not naked: O menino já está vestido.^[2][4][1]
2. Dressed for an occasion, or in clothes of a certain kind or material: vestida de linho.^[2][20]
3. (poetic) Covered, carpeted, as ground with grass or flowers.^[3][20]

Word family

• vestido-de-noiva

Related words

• vestir
• veste
• vestidura
• vestimenta
• Latin vestītus
• Spanish vestido

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. vestido
3. ^ a b c d Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. vestido
4. ^ 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. vestido
5. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 9476
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9285
7. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. vestitus
8. ^ 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
9. ^ 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. vestido
10. ^ 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. vestido
11. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. vestido
12. ^ a b c Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. vestido
13. ^ 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. vestido
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, 522
15. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. vestir
16. ^ 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. vestido
17. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. vestido
18. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. vestido
19. ^ CLUL (ed.) (2014), P.S. Post Scriptum: Arquivo Digital de Escrita Quotidiana em Portugal e Espanha na Época Moderna, Lisboa: Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, http://ps.clul.ul.pt, p. s.v. vestido
20. ^ 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. vestido