feria

Forms

feria f (plural ferias)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin fēria (“feast day; weekday”), a semi-learned descendant whose form reflects its use in the Church.^[2][3][4] Wiktionary calls it a learned borrowing from Latin.^[1] The Late Latin singular is a back-formation from classical fēriae (“holidays, religious festival”), which was used only in the plural.^[1][2] Christian Latin used the singular from the 5th century for each day of the week, to avoid the names of the pagan gods;^[2][5] this survives in Portuguese segunda-feira (“Monday”) and terça-feira (“Tuesday”).^[2][5]

The same Latin word is Galician feira, Catalan fira, French foire and Italian fiera.^[6][7][8] Coromines calls the Catalan word semi-popular too, first recorded in documents of 1163 and 1295.^[9] A more popular variant heria appears as a rustic form in the proverbs collected by Hernán Núñez and in Cervantes's Don Quijote.^[2] García de Diego also records it in the thieves' cant, for the underworld.^[6]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *fēs-io- (“holiday”) and Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-s-io- (“divine, holy”), with Ancient Greek θεός (theós, “god”) among the cognates.^[10] Wiktionary derives the Latin word from *dʰéh₁s (“god”), the root also of fēstus (“festive”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the first record to a charter of 1100 in Oelschläger's list.^[2][3] The Fuero de Madrid (before 1141–1235, in a copy of the first half of the 13th century) has a heading Ferias de Quadragesima, the ferias of Lent.^[11] In Berceo the word still means “feast day”.^[2][12]

Semantic evolution

Markets were held beside shrines and churches on the great religious feasts, so feria narrowed to the sense “market, fair” while fiesta took over the wider sense; the market sense is already in Juan Ruiz, in Alfonso de Palencia and in Nebrija, who still gives the old sense too.^[2] Alfonso X's prose uses the word for a weekday other than Saturday and Sunday, for a rest from work and for a market.^[13]

Covarrubias in 1611 explains it as a market with a great gathering of people and goods, names the fairs of Salamanca, Alcalá and Villalón, and calls them ferias francas when no sales tax was paid.^[14] Autoridades puts the church sense first, the weekdays named feria segunda for Monday and so on by a decree of Pope Sylvester, then the gathering of merchants, with Medina del Campo as the famous example.^[15] Today the main senses are the market, the festivities that go with it, the funfair with its rides and stalls, and the trade fair of one branch of goods.^[4][16]

In Mexico and Central America the word means “small change, money”, recorded by Malaret in 1946 and by the DAMER today.^[17][18] In Costa Rica it was a small extra given by the seller.^[4] The derivative feriado “public holiday”, dated in Spain, is very much alive in the Americas.^[2]

Timeline

• 1100 – first record, in a charter in Oelschläger's list.^[2][3]
• c. 1230–1260 – Berceo uses it for a feast day.^[12][2]
• 1280 – Alfonso X's General Estoria uses it for a market held for buying and selling.^[13]
• 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor has the market sense.^[2][19]
• 1369 – first record of the derivative feriado.^[3][2]
• 1513 – Nebrija glosses feria o fiesta with Latin feriae.^[20]
• 1525 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico City, of barter at fairs.^[21]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the proverb cada uno dize de la feria como le va en ella.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades gives the weekday sense first, then the gathering of merchants.^[15]
• 1946 – Malaret records the Mexican sense “small change”.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. A large market held in a public place on fixed days; a fair.^[4][1]
2. The festivities held on the occasion of such a fair.^[4]
3. The public place where animals and goods are displayed for sale.^[4]
4. The crowd of people at a fair.^[4]
5. A funfair: the rides, circuses, shooting booths and sweet stalls set up in a town for a festival.^[4][16]
6. A trade fair for the products of one industry or trade: Este año la feria del libro abre en mayo.^[4]
7. (ecclesiastical) Any day of the week except Saturday and Sunday, Monday being the feria segunda.^[4][15]
8. Rest, a suspension of work.^[4]
9. A deal, an agreement.^[4]
10. (Costa Rica, rare) A small extra given by a seller to a customer.^[4]
11. (colloquial, El Salvador, Mexico) money.^[4][18][1]
12. (Mexico, Nicaragua) Small change.^[4][18]

Word family

• ferial
• feriar
• feriado
• feriante

Related words

• fiesta
• Latin fēriae
• Portuguese feira

Usage notes

Set phrases include feria de muestras “trade fair” and the plural ferias mayores for the weekdays of Holy Week.^[4] In the 1609 cant vocabulary of Hidalgo feria means “deadline, term”.^[22]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 881
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. feria
4. ^ 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. feria
5. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1542
6. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2733
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. feria
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. foire
9. ^ 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. 3, 1043
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. feria
12. ^ 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. 256
13. ^ 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. feria
14. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 838
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 736
16. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. feria
17. ^ a b Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 412
18. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. feria
19. ^ 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. feria
20. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 353
21. ^ 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. feria
22. ^ Hidalgo, Juan (1609), Romances de germanía de varios autores, con el vocabulario por la orden del a.b.c. para declaración de sus términos y lengua, Barcelona: Sebastián de Cormellas (ed. Madrid 1779), p. 176