arca

Forms

arca f (plural arcas)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote archa and arqua.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish arca, also spelt archa, inherited from Latin arca (“chest, box”).^[4][5][6][1] The same Latin word is Italian arca, French arche, Occitan arca, Catalan arca and Portuguese arca, and it was borrowed into Old High German arahha and into Basque, Greek and Albanian.^[7][8]

De Vaan derives the Latin noun from the root of arceō (“to contain, keep off”), through Proto-Italic *arkā- (“container”); the noun may go back to Proto-Indo-European or have been formed within Italic.^[9][1] Varro already explained it as the box that keeps thieves away, and Covarrubias repeats the derivation in 1611.^[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy), where the Cid has two arcas filled with sand and covered with leather to pass them off as treasure: bastir quiero dos arcas, “I want to furnish two chests”.^[12][4] DEMel finds archa in a document from Roncesvalles of 1142–1159.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish an arca was above all a strong box for money and valuables;^[13][14] Alfonso X's Lapidario tells of a stone kept in the arcas and treasuries of the Holy Land.^[13][14] Noah's ark is arca de Noé in medieval texts.^[2] The plural arcas was used for the chest or thorax from the Gran conquista de Ultramar on, and the sense “tomb, coffin”, already Latin, is recorded from 1506.^[4] In Catalan and Galician place names the word survives as “dolmen”.^[4]

Covarrubias in 1611 records arca de agua for the covered tank of a water conduit, arcas for the flanks, and the proverb En arca abierta el justo peca, “an open chest tempts even the honest”.^[11][15] He also notes that arca de Noé was said of anything holding many different things.^[15] The modern dictionary adds the furnaces of glassworks and, in Ecuador, the armpit.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has the two arcas filled with sand.^[12][4]
• 1142–1159 – archa in a document from Roncesvalles.^[3]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses arcas for treasure chests.^[14]
• c. 1280 – the diminutive arqueta.^[5][4]
• 1362 – the augmentative arcaz in an Aragonese inventory.^[4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives scrinium for a chest of books.^[16]
• 1506 – first record of the sense “tomb, coffin”.^[4]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records arca de agua and En arca abierta el justo peca.^[11][15]
• 1726 – Autoridades notes that it takes the masculine article to avoid an ugly sound.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. A chest, usually of plain wood, with a flat lid on hinges and one or more locks.^[6][1]
2. A strongbox for money;^[1] (in the plural) the room or funds of a treasury: Las arcas del ayuntamiento están vacías.^[6]
3. Each of the secondary furnaces of a glassworks, where finished pieces are heated or cooled.^[6]
4. An arca de agua, a covered water tank.^[6][11]
5. (Ecuador) The armpit.^[6]
6. (rare) A tomb or coffin.^[6][4]
7. (obsolete) A kind of ship; an ark, as in arca de Noé.^[6][1]
8. (in the plural) The hollows between the ribs and the hips;^[17] (obsolete) the front of the chest.^[6][4]

Word family

• arcén
• arquear
• arqueta
• arcón
• arcaz
• arqueo

Related words

• Latin arca

Usage notes

Arca is feminine but takes el in the singular because it begins with a stressed /a/: el arca, las arcas.^[17] A separate, obsolete arca, from the verb arcar, meant the beating or fluffing of wool.^[6][4][18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. 46
3. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. arca
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 314
5. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. arca
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. arca
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 611
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 664
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. arca
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. arca
11. ^ a b c d Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 202
12. ^ 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. arca
13. ^ a b Alonso Pedraz, Martín (1986), Diccionario medieval español: desde las Glosas Emilianenses y Silenses (s. X) hasta el siglo XV, 2 vols., Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, p. 366
14. ^ a b c 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. arca
15. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 203
16. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 295
17. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 374
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 92