PROBLEMA
Latin Lemma
problēma, -ătis from Gk πρόβλημα
Latin POS
N
Latin Meaning
question proposed for solution, a problem; enigma, riddle, puzzle L&S
Spanish
Portuguese
Portuguese Lemma
problema
Portuguese Variants
problemas
Portuguese POS
Portuguese Morphologically related words
problemática, problematicidade, problemático, problematizar, problemista Houaiss
Ranking/frequency in Portuguese
Portuguese First attestation
Lógo, tratádo será de filosofia naturál? Porque meu méstre tem uns problemas, e diz ele que sam questões de folosofia (CDPGH: João de Barros, Gramática la língua portuguesa, 1540)
Portuguese Historical frequency (per million words)
13C: 0.00 | 14C: 0.00 | 15C: 0.00 | 16C: 0.69 | 17C: 2.44 | 18C: 5.48 | 19C: 32.25 | 20C: 490.77 | CDPGH |
French
Italian
English
Cultural transmission
Problema and its congeners were almost certainly introduced into Western European intellectual discourse as a result of Bartolomeo da Messina’s 13th-century translation of the Problemata Aristotelis from Greek into Latin and the subsequent commentary (Expositio succinta Problematum Aristotelis, also in Latin) by Pietro d’Abano. The first attestation in French is Évrart de Conti’s translation of these two works.
French is regarded as the most apparent source for English use in Chaucer OED. However, in the contemporaneous first attestation in French, it is clear from the context that problemes is an equivalence of convenience which is far from integrated even into cultured written language, since it needs explanation as fortes questions, and it therefore seems probable that it was not yet current in French at the time.
It seems likely that in 20C a number of common collocations in Spanish and French (possessive + problema / problème, sin problema / pas de problème, problema / problème + adjective) are the result of calquing from English. TLF regards Fr il n’y a pas de problème (first attested 1963) as a calque from English.