School and learning

The last entry is copiar, and the Latin behind it has nothing to do with likeness. Copia meant plenty, abundance, a full supply; it is co- joined to ops, resources, and it is the second half of cornu copiae, the horn of plenty, which English still carries whole as « cornucopia ». The sense now in use arrived in the writing room of a monastery. A monk who wrote a text out again did not make a likeness of it — he made there be more of it, and medieval Latin called the result a copia because that is precisely what it was, an increase in the number of texts in the world. Only later did the word slide from the quantity to the object, and from the object to the act. English keeps the old sense alive in one adjective, « copious », which still means plentiful and never means duplicated. Portuguese keeps it in copioso and gives the daily work to a cópia and copiar. So não vale a pena copiar tudo à mão is, at the root of the word, advice against making too much of a thing.