batalla

Forms

batalla f (plural batallas)^[1] Old Spanish texts also write batailla, bataylla and vatalla.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Occitan batalha, or perhaps borrowed from Medieval Latin battalia as written in Gaul, both from Late Latin battuālia (“fencing exercises”), originally the neuter plural of an adjective derived from battuō (“to beat; to fence”).^[4][5][6] The DLE gives the Occitan route through Vulgar Latin battalia; the 2001 edition and Moliner derived it from French bataille, and Wiktionary allows either Old Occitan or Old French.^[6][7][8][1] The ⟨ll⟩ shows that the word is not native: from Latin, Castilian would have had ⟨*bataja⟩.^[4][1] The old native words for a fight were lid and fazienda.^[4]

In most Romance languages the word developed natively, as in the French and Occitan words and in Italian battaglia, Catalan batalla and Romanian bătaie “blows, a beating”.^[4][9] Portuguese batalha also came from Old Occitan.^[10] battuō is a rare, popular word; the OLD calls it Gaulish, while Wiktionary thinks it may be Gaulish or Germanic and ultimately imitative.^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds batalla in 1131, and in Low Latin documents from Spain batalia already in 1129.^[4][5] In the Cantar de mio Cid (about 1140, in a 14th-century copy) it is a battle between two hosts: Mesnadas de mio Cid exir querién a la batalla “the Cid's companies wanted to go out to battle”.^[12][13][14] The Cid also uses it for single combat.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's Partidas still treated the word as a newcomer, set beside the older Spanish lid: batalla was a formal battle with kings on both sides, standards, and a van, flanks and rear.^[4][14] It also named a duel between two men, a sense that lasted until the early 17th century, by then mostly as singular batalla; from these knightly uses it gradually displaced lid and fazienda.^[4]

In 1726 Autoridades defined it as the fight of one army or fleet against another, and recorded two old senses, the centre of an army as distinct from the van and rear, and a body of troops.^[15] The Academy's dictionary of 1817 added a picture of a battle, a bout with blunt swords in fencing, a part of the crossbow, inner turmoil of the mind, and the obsolete senses “war” and “joust”.^[16] Today it also names a campaign against something (la batalla contra la droga), the seat of a saddle, the wheelbase of a vehicle, a Baroque organ piece for trumpet stops, and, mostly in the diminutive plural batallitas, the old stories someone tells about their past.^[6] In Cuba batalla was the stretch of axle on an oxcart between the bed and the wheel.^[17][18]

Timeline

• 1129 – Low Latin batalia in a document from Spain.^[4][5]
• 1131 – the first record in Spanish.^[4]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses it for battles and for single combat.^[12][3]
• mid-14th century – the verb batallar is first recorded.^[5]
• 1513 – Nebrija glosses Batalla as a body of men in battle order.^[19]
• 1539 – batallón is borrowed from Italian battaglione.^[5][4]
• 1544 – the first record from the Americas, in Paraguay.^[20]
• 1726 – Autoridades records the old senses “centre of an army” and “body of troops”.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives an etymology, from Low Latin.^[21]

Meanings

Noun

1. battle: a combat, or series of combats, between two armies or fleets: la batalla de Lepanto.^[6][1]
2. An action or series of actions aimed at a goal: Ganaron la batalla contra el analfabetismo.^[6]
3. Inner turmoil caused by a conflict of feelings.^[6]
4. Battle order.^[6]
5. (usually diminutive plural, batallitas) A story someone keeps telling about their own past.^[6][8]
6. The part of a saddle on which the rider sits.^[6]
7. (historical) The centre of an army, as distinct from the vanguard and rearguard; each of the divisions of an army.^[6][15]
8. (fencing) A bout fought with blunt swords.^[6]
9. (mechanics) The wheelbase of a four-wheeled vehicle.^[6]
10. (music) A Baroque organ piece for the trumpet stops.^[6]
11. (painting) A picture of a battle.^[6]
12. (obsolete) A joust or tournament; war.^[6]

Word family

• batallar
• batallón
• batallador

Related words

• batir
• combatir
• batahola
• lid
• Latin battuō

Usage notes

Batalla campal is a pitched battle, and colloquially a violent free-for-all.^[6] In Andalusia de batalla describes things for everyday use, as traje de batalla.^[22]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. batalla
3. ^ a b c Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 71
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 541
5. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. batalla
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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. batalla
7. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. batalla
8. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. batalla
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 995
10. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 483
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
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. batalla
13. ^ 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. 505
14. ^ a b Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 88
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 572
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 123
17. ^ Pichardo, Esteban (1875), Diccionario provincial casi-razonado de vozes y frases cubanas, 4th ed., La Habana: Imprenta El Trabajo, p. 37
18. ^ Suárez, Constantino (1921), Vocabulario cubano, La Habana: Librería Cervantes / Madrid: Perlado, Páez y Compañía, p. 53
19. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 302
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. batalla
21. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 142
22. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 82