cura

Forms

cura f (plural curas)^[1] In the senses “care” and “cure” the noun is feminine (la cura); for the priest it is masculine (el cura).^[2][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin cūra (“care, concern”).^[3][4][2][1] The priest was named for the “cure of souls”, the spiritual care of the parishioners in his charge: Corominas thinks that the feminine noun, or the phrase cura de almas, was first used for the person in charge, as the feminine guardia was used for a guard, and that the word then became masculine.^[3] Wiktionary instead treats the priest's name as borrowed from Ecclesiastical Latin, where the word was used of the holder of a monastic office.^[1] Medieval Latin already used it for the cure of souls and for a parish.^[5]

The same Latin word is Portuguese cura, Catalan cura, Italian cura and French cure.^[6][7] De Vaan derives the Latin noun, written with ⟨oi⟩ or ⟨oe⟩ in inscriptions of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, from Proto-Italic *kwois-ā- (“care, watch”), and that from Proto-Indo-European *kʷeys- (“to heed”), with cognates in Celtic and Avestan.^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word appears in the sense “care, concern” in the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (c. 1215, in a 14th-century copy), where the saint has no cura for anything but her pleasures, and in Berceo.^[9][3][10] The 1182 hit in the CDH is in a Latin text.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The phrases aver cura and aver cura de meant “to take care of, to heed” in Berceo and Juan Ruiz, and the Libro de buen amor (c. 1330) first has cura for the priest and cura de almas.^[11][3][4] In the same book it also means the healing of the sick.^[11] Nebrija distinguished cura por cuidado, cura de enfermo and cura de iglesia.^[12] The old sense “care” was obsolete by the 19th century, and the DLE marks it as disused; in popular use cura became a word for any priest, hence the pleonastic cura párroco.^[13][2][3] In Bolivia and Chile it means drunkenness.^[2][1]

Timeline

• c. 1215 – the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca uses cura for “care” (in a 14th-century copy).^[9]
• c. 1236 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos uses it.^[9]
• c. 1330 – Juan Ruiz uses cura for the parish priest.^[4][3]
• 1529 – first record in the Americas, of the priests of the church of León, Nicaragua.^[14]
• 1548 – Fernández de Oviedo notes that the avocado is called cura in parts of New Granada.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines the priest and the medical sense.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. (masculine) A Catholic priest who has charge of a parish (feligresía): El cura bendijo la nueva escuela.^[2][1]
2. (masculine, colloquial) Any Catholic priest.^[2]
3. (feminine) A cure, healing (curación); a treatment, as in cura de reposo.^[2][16]
4. (feminine) The dressing of a wound and the materials used for it.^[16][2]
5. (feminine, colloquial, Bolivia, Chile) Drunkenness (borrachera).^[2][1]
6. (feminine, Colombia, Venezuela) The avocado (aguacate).^[2]
7. (feminine, obsolete) Care; guardianship.^[2]

Related words

• curar
• curato
• curioso
• procurar
• seguro
• sinecura
• Latin cūra

Usage notes

Cura for the avocado (DLE sense 6, Wiktionary's third etymology, of unknown origin) is not the Latin word: Friederici takes it from a language of the highlands of New Granada, probably Chibcha or Panche, and records it in Aguado about 1565 and in Gilij in 1780.^[17][1] Alvarado also calls it a Chibcha word, little used in Venezuela.^[18] The set phrase cura de almas is the parish priest's charge of his parishioners.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. cura
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 295
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cura
5. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. cūra
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2045
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. cura
10. ^ 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. 839
11. ^ 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. 158
12. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 322
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 217
14. ^ a b 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. cura
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 705
16. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cura
17. ^ Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter, p. 227
18. ^ Alvarado, Lisandro (1921), Glosario de voces indígenas de Venezuela, Caracas: Victoria, p. 104