Stevedore

[Flaminius]

STEVEDORE

NOUN: One who is employed in the loading or unloading of ships.

TRANSITIVE & INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: ste·ve·dored, ste·ve·dor·ing, ste·ve·dores
To load or unload the cargo of (a ship) or to engage in the process of loading or unloading such a vessel.

ETYMOLOGY: Spanish estibador, from estibar, to stow, from Latin stipare, to pack.


According to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000

Just amazed how the third consonant has migrated from /p/ to /b/ and then to /v/.

[Brazilian dude]

Oh, that happens all the time. Latin p becomes voiced in Portuguese/Spanish/Catalan but remains voiceless in Italian/French: Latin capillus, Pt cabelo, Sp cabello, Catalan cabell, It cappello, French cheveux . As a matter of fact, Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan seem to have a predilection for voiced consonants, whereas Italian and French normally keep them voiceless: c (k) - g, t - d, p - b. How it went from estibador to stevedore is probably due to the fact that Spanish intervocalic b sounds somewhere between a b and a v, and to an English speaker that could have sounded like a v at that particular time. I'd also like to point out that in Portuguese we have estivador, so something else could be at play too. Anyway, b in Spanish and v in Portuguese is a very common phenomenon: deber/dever (to owe/must), haber/haver (to have), etc. Here Spanish has kept the b that was already found in Latin (debere, habere), and we have a v because we pronounce it a v!

Brazilian dude

[frank]

STEVEDORE
ETYMOLOGY: Spanish estibador, from estibar, to stow, from Latin stipare, to pack.
Just amazed how the third consonant has migrated from /p/ to /b/ and then to /v/.

Hi,

Intervocalic -p- becomes voiced before stressed vowel.
Intervocalic -b- becomes voiced fricative, which sounds like -v- (especially when it doesn't exist in the own language).

Frank