cada

Forms

cada (invariable)^[2][1] Old Spanish also wrote quada and cad, and cadal before día.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin cata, which is from Ancient Greek κατά (katá, “down from; during; according to”).^[5][6][7][1] The Greek preposition was used in adverbial phrases with a distributive sense, such as “every year”, “three at a time” and “one by one”, and Vulgar Latin took it over in this sense, first as an adverb and often placed between two copies of the same noun.^[5][6][8] The Vulgate has it in Ezekiel 46:15 in the sense “morning by morning”.^[9][10]

The Latin phrase cata unum, a calque of the Greek “one by one”, gave the Old Spanish pronoun caduno “each one”, the usual medieval form, and the old phrase an cada año “every year” continues annum cata annum.^[5][11] Once cada uno had become a pronoun, it was also put before other nouns, as in cada un año, and the shortening of such phrases to cada año left the word as an adjective.^[5]

The same word is Catalan cada, Portuguese cada and Galician cada,^[12] and the old Italian cadauno and the Old Occitan cadaun contain it.^[13] The Greek word meant “down, downwards, along, against” in Homer;^[14][1] Beekes reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *km̥t- (“down, with, along”), perhaps connected with Latin cum (“with”), and Wiktionary gives *ḱm̥-th₂ as a possible source.^[14][1]

Covarrubias derived the word from Latin quotus (“how many”), an opinion Autoridades repeats and the Academy still printed as the etymology in 1884 and 1899;^{[15][16][17][18][19]} Alemany's dictionary of 1917 gives the Greek origin.^{[15][16][17][18][19]}

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the first record to 987, without quoting the text.^[5][6] The earliest hits in the CDH are the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy), where the share of each of the Cid's knights is told: a cada uno d'ellos caen ciento marcos de plata “to each one of them fall a hundred marks of silver”; and the Cortes de Benavente of 1202, which speak of muchos de cada villa en mio regno “many from each town in my kingdom”.^[20] In Berceo's Vida de San Millán (1235) each house was to give a cubit of sackcloth, Devíen dar cada casa un cobdo de sayal.^[21][22]

Semantic evolution

Until the 17th century the word kept something of its old prepositional value, in constructions where cada uno would be used today: in the Quijote, the father gives his sons cada tres mil ducados, “three thousand ducats each”.^[5] Medieval Castilian and Galician-Portuguese had cada que “whenever”, which Juan de Valdés already rejected but which went to the Americas and survives in northern Argentina.^[5] Alfonso X's prose uses cada que in this sense and cadauna and cada un as pronoun and adjective.^[23] The phrase cada qual “each one” is not recent: Corominas finds it in Juan de Pineda's edition of the Passo honroso (1588).^[5]

Covarrubias (1611) noted that the word never stands alone and listed proverbs such as Cada buhonero alaba sus agujas “every pedlar praises his needles”.^[15] Autoridades defined it as a particle always used in the singular that distributes equally among two or many, and noted that it takes the prepositions a, con, de, en, por and tras.^[16] Purists of the Americas condemned some uses: the Ecuadorian Tobar called cada tarde for “every afternoon” a Catalanism, and the Chilean Román rejected the farewell hasta cada rato.^[24][25] Today the word also groups things by a number (cada tres meses) and has an intensive use in exclamations (¡Dice cada cosa!).^[7] In Latin America it can be an adverb meaning “every time”.^[1]

Timeline

• 987 – first record of the word, according to Corominas.^[5][6]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has a cada uno d'ellos, “to each of them”.^[20][4]
• 1202 – the Cortes de Benavente have muchos de cada villa, the first CDH hit without a later witness.^[20]
• 1235 – Berceo's Vida de San Millán uses cada casa.^[21]
• 1256 – cada que “whenever” in the prose of Alfonso X's court.^[23]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija renders cada tres años with Latin tertius quisque annus.^[26][27]
• 1516 – first record in the Americas, at Darién.^[28]
• 1588 – cada qual in Juan de Pineda's Passo honroso.^[5]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives the word from Latin quotus.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives quotus as the etymology.^[17]
• 1917 – Alemany's dictionary gives the Vulgar Latin and Greek etymology.^[19]

Meanings

Determiner

1. each, every: takes the members of a set one by one, in relation to something else; used before singular countable nouns: Le dieron un regalo a cada niño.^[7][1]
2. Before a cardinal number and a plural noun, groups things in sets of that size: Pasa un autobús cada diez minutos.^[7]
3. Every single member of a series, taken individually: Leyó cada página con cuidado.^[7]
4. (intensifying) Such, such a: in consecutive or exclamatory sentences, stresses how remarkable something is: ¡Tiene cada idea!^[7]
5. (obsolete) To each one, apiece.^[7][5]

Pronoun

1. (after a number and de) One of each kind: Compra dos de cada.^[7]

Adverb

1. (Latin America) Every time.^[1]

Word family

• cadañero

Related words

• cada uno
• Latin cata
• Ancient Greek κατά (katá)
• Catalan cada

Usage notes

Cada is invariable and goes with a singular noun, or with a plural noun only after a numeral.^[16][29] Moliner notes that it may be stressed or unstressed, and is always unstressed before a numeral;^[30] Corominas reports it unstressed in Old Castile, Asturias and Navarre but stressed in southern Spain and in the Americas.^[30][5] The phrase cada cual means “each one”.^[7]

A separate noun cada names a Mediterranean juniper (Juniperus oxycedrus). The DLE derives it from cade;^[7][31][32] Corominas takes it from a Catalan variant of càdec and dates it to about 1780;^[7][31][32] Vox calls it an 18th-century loan from Catalan or French.^[7][31][32]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Cuervo, Rufino José (1886–1893), Diccionario de construcción y régimen de la lengua castellana, vols. I–II (A–D), París: A. Roger y F. Chernoviz, p. 2, 14
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cada
4. ^ 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. 88
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 730
6. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cada
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. cada
8. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. cada
9. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 132
11. ^ 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. 2, 376
12. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. cata
13. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
14. ^ a b Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
15. ^ 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. 374
16. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 39
17. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 184
18. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 170
19. ^ a b c Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 295
20. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. cada
21. ^ 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. 577
22. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 199
23. ^ a b 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. cada
24. ^ Tobar, Carlos R. (1907), Consultas al Diccionario de la lengua, 2nd ed., Barcelona: Imprenta de la Revista Ibérica, p. 82
25. ^ Román, Manuel Antonio (1901–1918), Diccionario de chilenismos y de otras voces y locuciones viciosas, 5 vols., Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de San José, p. 224
26. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. cada
27. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 307
28. ^ 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. cada
29. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 132
30. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cada
31. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 729
32. ^ a b c Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. cada