menino

See also: meniño

Italian

Verb

menino

1. third-person plural present subjunctive of menare
2. third-person plural imperative of menare

Anagrams

• nomine

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Portuguese

Um menino [1]

Meninos [2]

Alternative forms

• minino (obsolete, eye dialect)
• meninho (archaic)

Etymology

From Old Portuguese meninno, menỹo (the expected palatal nasal survives in the Galician cognate meniño), of uncertain origin:

• From Latin minimus.
• From a Gallo-Romance language (cf. Catalan minyó (“boy”), French mignon (“cute”) ).
• From (meu ninno):, with (ninno): being a borrowing from Old Spanish niño. The alveolar nasal may have arisen due to conflation with Old Portuguese neno, from Vulgar Latin *ninnus.
• From a pre-Roman substrate of Iberia, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *mey- (“small”) (compare Middle Irish menn (“kid”), Middle Breton menn (“young goat”), Middle Welsh myn (“kid”), from Proto-Celtic *menno-).

Cognate with Galician meniño.

Pronunciation

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /mɨ.ˈni.nu/
• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /me.ˈni.nu/
• Hyphenation: me‧ni‧no

Noun

menino m (plural meninos, feminine menina, feminine plural meninas)

1. boy (a young male)
2. child (a young person)
3. child (offspring)

Synonyms

• garoto, rapaz, moço, miúdo (Portugal), guri (chiefly dialectal in Southern Brazil), piá (dialectal in Paraná, Brazil), catraio (colloquial)

Derived terms

• meninada

Related terms

• menina
• menininho
• meninão

Descendants

• Kabuverdianu: mininu
• → Spanish: menino, menina
  • → French: menin