MOMENTO
Latin Lemma
momĕntum (< movimĕntum, which is not attested in Latin)
Latin POS
N
Latin Meaning
Spanish
Portuguese
French
French Lemma
moment
French Variants
plural
French POS
French Morphologically related words
[to be completed]
Ranking/frequency in French
French First attestation
affondree est en .I. moment (FRANTEXT: Anon., Le roman d’Eneas, c 1160)
French Historical frequency (per million words)
| 13C: 4 | 14C: 13 | 15C: 8 | 16C: 23 | 17C: 159 | 18C: 395 | 19C: 496 | 20C: 458 | 21C: 492 | FRANTEXT |
French Semantic history
» 'short space of time', 'point in time'
emplie l'a soudeement : / affondree est en .I. moment (FRANTEXT: Anon., Le roman d'Eneas, c.1160)
Le foudre se destourne avec le vent d'un chapeau, et les fortunes des grands estats avec un petit moment. (FRANTEXT: Pierre Charron, De la sagesse: trois livres, 1601)
» 'occasion, circumstance'
certains moments favorables et décisifs (TLF, La Rochefoucauld, Oeuvres, 1654-1659)
» 'present time' (le moment)
suivre sans regle l'impulsion du moment (TLF: Rousseau, Confessions, c.1770)
The meaning 'importance' is not usual in French.
French Collocational history
» In meaning of 'short space of time', very frequently used in the expression en un moment.
» Especially frequent in time expressions: en/à ce moment(-là), which rise in frequency from the 17C.
» dernier moment from 15C (TLF)
» moment psychologique, a calque of Germ. das psychologische Moment, which was used at the time of the bombardment of Paris in 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War in the sense of ‘the decisive factor, the reason’. Le moment psychologique came to mean ‘the opportune, appropriate moment’ through misinterpretation of Germ. das Moment (neuter) ‘factor, element’ as der Moment (masculine) ‘moment’ or ‘instance’ (TLF). As such it has been calqued (presumably from French) into other Romance languages.