agua

Forms

agua f (plural aguas)^[1] Old Spanish wrote the word agua from the start, beside archaic Latinising spellings aqua, acua and aucua in the earliest glosses, Mozarabic and aljamiado texts.^[2][3] Ágoa occurs in 13th-century texts, mostly Leonese and Navarrese, and is still used in Galicia and western Asturias and León, augua and auga are found in Leonese, Navarrese and Aragonese texts of the 13th–15th centuries.^[2][4] Eastern Aragonese, next to Catalan, has aigua or aygua; casual speech in Spain and the Americas often reduces the word to /ˈawa/.^[2][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin aqua (“water”); Old Spanish agua has the same form in the earliest texts.^[4][5][6][1] Spanish kept the Latin /kʷ/ between vowels as /ɡʷ/, the usual voicing of a voiceless stop in that position.^[2][4]

The same Latin word is Portuguese água, Galician auga, Asturian agua, Catalan aigua, Occitan aiga, French eau, Italian acqua and Romanian apă.^[7][8][1] Corominas suggests that the Catalan and Occitan forms with ⟨i⟩ grew by dissimilation out of a variant augua, which is widespread in Leonese and Aragonese.^[4] In his Catalan dictionary he leaves the ⟨i⟩ unexplained, and names this variant as only one possible source.^[9]

aqua goes back to *akʷā, and its closest cognate is Germanic: 𐌰𐍈𐌰 (aƕa) and aha, from *ahwō.^[10] Wiktionary derives it from *h₂ekʷeh₂, a word that seems to have meant “running water”.^[1] De Vaan considers other cognates very uncertain, and notes that the Italic and Germanic word may have been borrowed from a non-Indo-European language.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Glosas Silenses, of the second half of the 10th century, record the word in the spelling aqua.^[2][5][3] The first text written in Spanish, the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy), already has the full sense “water”: „Del agua fezist vino e de la piedra pan” “of water you made wine, and of stone bread”.^[2][11] In the Cid it also means “river, stream”: Rodrigo's men cross the river by the ford rather than by the bridge.^[4][11]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish already used the word for the liquid, for a river and for the sea, and in the plural for tears.^[12] Compounds named prepared liquids: agua rosada “rose water” and agua bendita “holy water” appear in medieval texts.^[12][13] The sense “river” survives mainly in place names.^[4]

From the 1726 Autoridades to 1791 the Academy defined water as one of the four elements, as Covarrubias had done in 1611.^[2][14][13] Its 1884 edition was the first to give an etymology, “Del lat. aqua”, and to describe water chemically, as a compound of oxygen and hydrogen.^[15] Today the plural also names mineral springs, territorial waters and the watered sheen of a fabric or gem.^[6] In parts of Latin America agua means a soft drink (Guatemala) or an infusion.^[16][1]

Because the word begins with a stressed a, it takes the masculine-looking article el (el agua). In Argentina and elsewhere this has led to masculine agreement (este agua), a usage found as early as Saint Teresa.^[4][2]

Timeline

• c. 950–1000 – the Glosas Silenses gloss with the spelling aqua.^[2][5]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses agua for “water” and for “river”.^[2][4]
• c. 1205 – the Navarrese–Leonese form ágoa appears in the Razón de amor.^[2]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses the word in its scientific prose.^[17]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin aqua and Greek-derived lympha as its equivalents.^[18][19]
• 1512 – the first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[20]
• 1611 – Covarrubias calls water the chief of the four elements.^[14]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it in the same way.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology and a chemical definition for the first time.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. water: the clear, colourless liquid made of hydrogen and oxygen, H₂O, that forms rain, rivers and the sea.^[6][1]
2. A drink or liquid made by infusing or dissolving flowers, plants or fruit, as in agua de rosas “rose water”.^[6][21]
3. rain, often in the plural: Anoche cayó mucha agua.^[6][1]
4. (in the plural) Tears; urine.^[6][21][1]
5. (architecture) Each sloping side of a roof.^[6]
6. (in the plural) Mineral springs; the waters near a coast: en aguas de Málaga.^[6]
7. (in the plural) The wavy sheen of some fabrics, feathers or stones, and the lustre of gems.^[6]
8. (Guatemala) A soft drink.^[16][1]

Word family

• aguada
• aguadero
• aguanoso
• aguado
• aguar
• aguador
• aguaza
• aguacero
• desaguar
• aguardiente

Related words

• acuátil
• acueducto
• ácueo
• acuícola
• aguacha
• aguachento
• aguaducho
• Latin aqua
• Portuguese água

Usage notes

Agua is feminine but takes el and un in the singular because it begins with a stressed /a/: el agua clara, las aguas.^[2][4] Set phrases include agua bendita “holy water” and tejado a dos aguas “gable roof”.^[6][13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. agua
3. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. agua
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 79
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. agua
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. agua
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 621
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 570
9. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 1, 90
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. agua
12. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 18
13. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 124
14. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 79
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 31
16. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. agua
17. ^ Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. agua
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (c. 1495), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca (facsimile, Madrid: Real Academia Española 1951), p. 21
19. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 286
20. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. agua
21. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. agua