mboîoby

Old Tupi

Alternative forms

  • mboîubu
Historical spellings 
VLB (1622) boyobŷ

Etymology

Inherited from Proto-Tupi-Guarani *mojoβɨ. By surface analysis, mboîa (“snake”) +‎ oby (“green”).[1]

Cognate with Guaraní mbói hovy.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): [ᵐbɔ.jɔˈβ̞ɨ]
  • Rhymes: -ɨ
  • Hyphenation: mbo‧îo‧by

Noun

mboîoby (unpossessable)

  1. a species of green snake.[2] Further details are uncertain. Possibilities include:
    • [1587, Gabriel Soares de Sousa, chapter CXIII, in Notícia do Brasil (in Portuguese), Salvador; republished as Francisco Adolpho de Varnhagen, editor, Tratado descriptivo do Brazil em 1587, 2nd edition, Rio de Janeiro: João Ignancio da Silva, 1879, page 242:
      Boiubú quer dizer cobra verde, que não são grandes, e criam-se no campo, onde se mantem com ratos que tomam. Estas tambem mordem gente se podem, mas são muito peçonhentas, as quaes se enroscam com as lagartixas, ratos è com outros bichos com que se atrevem, que tambem matam para comer.
      “Mboîobu” means “green snake”. They aren't large and live on the fields, where they feed on rats they catch. These also bite people if they can, but are very venomous; they coil around geckoes, rats, and other animals that they face, which they also kill to eat.]
    1. any of various green, elongated snakes[1]
    2. Lichtenstein's green racer (Philodryas olfersii)[3]

Descendants

  • → Brazilian Portuguese: boiobi, boiubu

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Navarro, Eduardo de Almeida (2013), “mboîoby”, in Dicionário de tupi antigo: a língua indígena clássica do Brasil [Dictionary of Old Tupi: The Classical Indigenous Language of Brazil] (overall work in Portuguese), São Paulo: Global, →ISBN, page 271, column 2
  2. ^ anonymous author (1622), “Cobra […] Dizem os naturais q. se gera nos ares e he certo [Snake; the natives say that it breeds in the air and it's true]”, in Vocabulario na lingoa Braſilica (overall work in Portuguese), Piratininga; republished as Carlos Drummond, editor, Vocabulário na Língua Brasílica, 2nd edition, volume 1, São Paulo: USP, 1953, page 76: “Boyobŷ [Mboîoby]”
  3. ^ Papavero, Nelson; Teixeira, Dante Martins (2014), Zoonímia tupi nos escritos quinhentistas europeus [Tupi zoonymy in the 16th-century European writings] (Arquivos NEHiLP; 3) (in Portuguese), São Paulo: FFLCH-USP, →DOI, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 271
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