vinte

Forms

vinte m or f^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote viinte, vijnte, vynte and vinte, and once vinti (1293); Houaiss dates vynte to 1344 and vinte to 1365.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin vīgintī (“twenty”), written Old Galician-Portuguese viinte and Old Galician-Portuguese vinte in the oldest texts.^[3][4][5][1] Nascentes derives it through a form like Spanish veinte: the second /i/ was kept by the metaphony of the final /i/, and the first was dissimilated before the stressed vowel.^[5] In 1955 he reported that Seelmann derives the Portuguese and Spanish forms directly from the Latin word, rejecting D'Ovidio's view that they could have passed through a form like the Spanish one.^[6] Corominas and Pascual accept that the oldest Spanish form was stressed veínte, and note that a form without the diphthong, as in Portuguese, appears in the Poema de Yúçuf, the Fuero Juzgo, documents from Asturias and Mirandese.^[7]

The same Latin word is Galician vinte, Mirandese binte, Catalan vint, French vingt and Italian venti.^[8][6][1]

The Latin numeral continues *wīkentī, from *h₁wih₁ḱm̥ti, a dual “two tens”, from an older *dwi(h₁)dḱm̥ti.^[9][1][10] Its cognates include εἴκοσι (eíkosi) and विंशति (viṃśatí).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

A charter of 1282 already writes e vynte anos “and twenty years” and vijnte et noue annos “twenty-nine years”, and the Cantigas de Santa Maria have a vint' e seis dias “on the twenty-sixth day” and viint' e quatro “twenty-four”.^[2] The sense is the number itself, as in Latin.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The numeral has kept its meaning.^[4] Spellings with ⟨ii⟩ and ⟨y⟩ still alternated with vinte in the 14th century.^[3][2] As a noun it names the figure 20 and, in the old game of skittles, the pin worth twenty points; from that game comes dar no vinte “to hit the mark, to guess right”.^[11][12]

Derivatives named coins and groups of twenty: vintém, the old coin of twenty réis, comes from the archaic vinteno.^[4] In Brazilian informal speech the plural vintes is a cigarette end, and in the gang slang of Fortaleza vinte is a cigarette.^[3][13] The word passed into Kabuverdianu as vinti.^[1]

Timeline

• 1282 – vynte and vijnte in a charter.^[2]
• 13th century – the Cantigas de Santa Maria write vint and viint.^[2][3]
• 1293 – the spelling vinti.^[2]
• 1344 – vynte; 1365 – vinte.^[3]
• c. 1430 – vinte in the Horto do Esposo.^[14]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses it with Latin viginti.^[15]
• 1611 – Barbosa adds vinte vezes and de vinte em vinte.^[16]

Meanings

Numeral

1. twenty, nineteen plus one; 20, XX: Tenho vinte anos.^[3][17][1]
2. Twentieth in a series: o capítulo vinte.^[3][18]

Noun

1. The number twenty, or the figure 20.^[3][18][1]
2. In the game of skittles, the pin worth twenty points.^[12][11]
3. (Brazil, informal, in the plural) A cigarette end, a guimba.^[3]

Word family

• vintém
• vintena

Related words

• vigésimo
• Latin vīgintī
• Galician vinte
• Spanish veinte

Usage notes

Dar no vinte means “to hit the mark, to guess right; to win”.^[3][12][19]

Michaelis also records an obsolete adjective vinte “coming, future”, from vir, and its plural vintes “those to come”.^[19]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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. vinte
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. vinte
4. ^ a b c d e Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. vinte
5. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. vinte
6. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 526
7. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 756
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. viginti
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. vīgintī
11. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. vinte
12. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 9521
13. ^ Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. vinte
14. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. vinte
15. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. vinte
16. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. vinte
17. ^ 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. vinte
18. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. vinte
19. ^ 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. vinte