Word of the Day

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Libido

Yesterday while pondering on the word libido and its feminine gender in Portuguese - quite rare for a word ending in -o -, it occurred to me that if libido had come into Portuguese through uninterrupted evolution and not been picked up by Freud in its nominative form and taken up by all other European languages, we would have libidem today. Why? Latin words ending in -o of the third declension (genitive in -is) have extended stems in all cases except nominative. Let's take origo, originis (origin): nominative origo, genitive originis, dative origini, ablative origine, accusative originem. Latin words are said to evolve into Portuguese through the accusative sans -m, that's why we have origem. Following the same reasoning, nominative libido, genitive libidinis, dative libidini, ablative libidine, accusative libidinem would have become libidem in Portuguese, belonging to the group of countless words ending in -em.

4 comments:

Jose Carlos said...

1. Many Portuguese words ending in ão are feminine: mão, ação, lição, dicção, canção...
2. Not all Latin words in -o, of the third declension, coming into Portuguese will end in -em (virgo -virgem, homo - homem). Take, for instance, leo and sermo, but it is true they end in a nasal sound, instead (leão, sermão). Libido has kept the final -o and can be viewed as an exception.
3. Did you know the connection between libido and lieben (German) and love (English)? Just a short digression...

světluška said...

1. I don't know why you mentioned that.
2.Leo and sermo are masculine words.3
3.No, I didn't. That's quite interesting. We can add to this list Russian любовь (love) and Czech líbit (to love), just to mention two Slavic languages.

Jose Carlos said...

1. Because they are feminine words ending in "o". Take the "a" away. Just a curiosity.
2. I know, but so is homo.

světluška said...

This is how it happened:
virgo, ac. virginem - virgem
homo, ac. hominem - homem
sermo, ac. sermonem - sermom - sermão
leo, ac. leonem - leom - leão