boitatá

Portuguese

Alternative forms
  • baitatá, batatá, biatatá, bata, batatão

Etymology

From Old Tupi mba'etatá (“will o' the wisp”, literally “fire thing”). Because of the similarity, the etymology would be later reanalyzed as mboîtatá (literally “fire snake”), thus giving origin to the modern myth in Brazilian folklore of a fire serpent.[1]

Pronunciation
  • (Brazil) IPA(key): /boj.taˈta/ [boɪ̯.taˈta]

  • Rhymes: -a
  • Hyphenation: boi‧ta‧tá

Proper noun

boitatá m (plural boitatás)

  1. (Brazil, folklore) term used to designate the will o' the wisp phenomenon and, from this deriving, some mythical entities

References
  1. Eduardo de Almeida Navarro (2013) Dicionário de tupi antigo: a língua indígena clássica do Brasil‎ (in Portuguese), São Paulo: Global, →ISBN
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.