aradura

Forms

aradura f (plural araduras)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin arātūra (“ploughing”).^[1][2][3] In Spanish terms it is the verb arar with the suffix -dura.^[1] The Latin noun was formed on arō (“to plough”), which goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₂erh₃- (“to plough”).^[1][4] In Medieval Latin it meant ploughing, ploughing service owed to a lord, and a measure of arable land.^[5][6]

The same Latin word is Romanian arătură, Italian aratura, Sardinian aradura, Old French areure, Catalan aradura and Portuguese aradura.^[3][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Castilian version of Ibn Bassal's treatise on agriculture (before 1300, in an early-15th-century copy) uses the word for one ploughing of a field: Aguisen la tierra ante de dos araduras o de tres “let them first prepare the land with two or three ploughings”.^[7][8]

Semantic evolution

The word has always been rare: the CDH has only six documents with it.^[7] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1726) defined it as the act of ploughing and noted that in Asturias día de aradura was the land a pair of oxen ploughs in a day.^[9] The Academy kept this Asturian sense from 1817, and Moliner still gives it.^[10][11] In Cuba it is the everyday word for ploughing a field.^[12][13]

Timeline

• 1272 – Leonese documents have the form araturas.^[8]
• c. 1300 – the Castilian version of Ibn Bassal's treatise has araduras.^[7][8]
• 1499 – Fernández de Santaella's Vocabulario eclesiástico uses it to gloss a Latin word for a small furrow.^[7]
• 1604 – Corominas's date for the word.^[14]
• 1627 – Gonzalo Correas uses it in his collection of proverbs.^[7]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the Asturian día de aradura.^[9]
• 1962 – Alejo Carpentier uses it in El siglo de las luces.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. ploughing, the action and effect of ploughing: La aradura del campo nos llevó toda la semana.^[15][1][11]
2. (Asturias) Ploughed land; the area a yoke of oxen ploughs in a day (arada).^[11][16]

Related words

• arar
• arado
• arador
• arada
• Late Latin arātūra

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. aradura
3. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. arātūra
4. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
6. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre
7. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. aradura
8. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. aradura
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 369
10. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 80
11. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. aradura
12. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. aradura
13. ^ 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. aradura
14. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. arar
15. ^ 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. aradura
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 90