res

Cognate with Portuguese rês. Origin contested. From either Latin rēs (“thing, property”) or Arabic رَأْس (raʔs, “head”, also of cattle). While the latter is a perfect semantic match, the front vowel of the Romance form speaks against Arabic origin because dialects generally maintain a back -a- in this word (compare Maltese ras, not *ries). For the sense evolution in the former derivation, compare English cattle.