Portuguese-based creole languages used to distinguish locally born black people of African descent from those who had been brought from Africa as slaves. In time, however, this generic sense was lost, and the word "crioulo" or its derivatives (like "Creole" and its equivalents in other languages) became the name of several specific Upper Guinean communities and their languages: the Guinean people and their Kriol language, Cape Verdean people and their Kriolu language, all of which still today have very vigorous use, suppressing the importance of official standard Portuguese. The oldest Portuguese-based creole are the so-called "crioulos" of Upper Guinea, born around the Portuguese
Medieval etymology such speculations have sometimes proved correct in the light of modern scholarship, but generally they were based on superficial similarities. Like classical etymology, Medieval Christian etymology drew tenuous connections between superficially similar words, but exegetical etymology was radically new in what it then did with the connections. The purpose of etymology was to elucidate the spiritual background to a concept, drawing out aspects of semantics in a similar manner to the symbolic interpretation of the natural world. An example: Hugh of St Victor derived the Latin word "mors" ('death') from "morsus" ('bite'): "a morsu primi hominis qui vetitae arboris pomum