António de Morais Silva
Antônio de Morais Silva (1 August 1755 – 11 April 1824) was a Brazilian-born Portuguese lexicographer.
Contents
Biography
António de Morais Silva was born in Rio de Janeiro, Colonial Brazil. He graduated in civil and canon law from the University of Coimbra.
His main work is the Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa (commonly referred to as Dicionário Morais), which in its original edition was entitled Diccionario da Lingua Portugueza composed by Father D. Rafael Bluteau, reformed, and added by Antonio de Moraes Silva, a native of Rio de Janeiro (1789).
The Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa is considered by some to be "the beginning of modern Portuguese dictionaries", the origin and foundation of "the entire lexicographic genealogy developed over the last 200 years" and a factor of linguistic harmony and synergy between Brazil and Portugal. However, as the full title of the 1st edition indicates, the dictionary was based on the Vocabulario Portuguez, e Latino, by Father Rafael Bluteau (published in 8 volumes in Coimbra and Lisbon between 1712 and 1721 and completed with 2 volumes of supplement published in Lisbon in 1727 and 1728), a work that António de Morais Silva reformed and expanded. The 2nd and 3rd editions of the Diccionario (1813 and 1823) were already substantially enriched and updated by Morais Silva, which is why it was considered a new work. As the author died in 1824, the 3rd edition, dated 1823, was the last one under his responsibility. The dictionary retained the authorship of Morais until the last edition, the 10th (1949–1959), despite the successive contributions of several other lexicographers who enriched and improved it.
In 1788, a year before the first publication of his dictionary, Morais Silva had returned to Portugal from exile in England. He had left for London in 1779, fleeing an arrest order from the Coimbra Inquisition, which accused him of heresy. It was therefore in his exile in London that he advanced much of the work on the dictionary.
He was the translator of a History of Portugal, composed in English by a society of literati, published in Lisbon in 1802.[1]
After his return to Brazil, around 1802, Morais Silva practiced law in Pernambuco and dedicated himself to sugar farming in Muribeca (today part of the municipality of Jaboatão dos Guararapes), the parish of which he was regent. In 1806 he was again the target of investigation by the Inquisition, based on a complaint from Pernambuco, but his case was dismissed in Lisbon. Despite ongoing problems with the Inquisition, he was decorated with the Order of Christ in 1808. Later in life he was acclaimed a member of the revolutionary government of Pernambuco (1817).
Notes
- ↑ Ramos, A., & Araujo, V. L. de (2015). "A Emergência de um Ponto de Vista Cosmopolita: A Experiência da História de Portugal na Universal History," Almanack, No. 10, pp. 465–78.
References
- Baião, António (1924). Episódios Dramáticos da Inquisição Portuguesa, Vol. 2. Rio de Janeiro: Anuário do Brasil.
- Santos Verdelho, Telmo dos (2003). "O Dicionário de Morais Silva e o Início da Lexicografia Moderna." In: História da Língua e História da Gramática — Actas do Encontro. Braga: Universidade do Minho/ILCH, pp. 473–90.
- Saraiva, José Hermano (2004). História de Portugal, Dicionário de Personalidades, Vol. 19. Matosinhos: Quidnovi.
- Wadsworth, James E. (2013). "The End of an Era — The End of a Career." In: Defence of the Faith: Joaquim Marques de Araújo, a Comissário in the Age of Inquisitional Decline. McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp. 129–40.
External links
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