flota

Forms

flota f (plural flotas)^[1] The Poema de Alfonso XI (c. 1350) also has the Portuguese-looking form frota.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old French flote, modern French flotte, from Old Norse floti (“fleet; raft”).^[2][3][4][1] The Old Norse noun comes from the verb fljóta (“to float”), cognate with Old English flēotan, Old High German fliozan and German fließen “to flow”.^[2] Wiktionary traces the French word to Proto-Germanic *flutô (“float, raft, boat”), from *fleutaną (“to float”).^[1] Like many sea terms, Corominas says, the word spread southwards from the north: it occurs in two medieval texts from Bordeaux, the route by which it reached Castilian and Portuguese frota.^[2]

The French word has the naval sense in Benoît's chronicle of the dukes of Normandy (c. 1170), and perhaps already in the Old French song of William.^[2] Because the sense “group of people or things” is better recorded in Old French, several scholars took the French “fleet” for a Hispanism, and the FEW and the REW gave the general sense a separate origin, Latin fluctus (“wave, flood”).^[2] Corominas rejects this, and takes “group” to be a figurative use of “fleet”.^[2] The DHLF dates the French word to about 1138 and thinks it crossed with an Old French homonym meaning “crowd”, from the same Latin noun.^[5] Covarrubias and the Diccionario de Autoridades had derived the Spanish word from the Latin one “because it moves on the waves”, and the Academy in 1884 and 1899 from flotar.^[6][7][8][9]

That verb is a separate borrowing, of French flotter, recorded from 1525.^[3][2] Italian flotta “squadron” first appears at the end of the 15th century in translations from Spanish and Portuguese, and is probably of Ibero-Romance origin.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Alfonso X's Siete Partidas (c. 1260): La primera es flota de galeas e de naves, con poder de gente, bien assí como la grand hueste, que faze camino por la tierra “The first is a fleet of galleys and ships with a force of men, just like the great host that marches by land”.^[2][10] The Estoria de España (1270–1284) tells of a captain sent con muj grand hueste & con flota muj grand en que auie tres mill naues “with a very large army and a very large fleet of three thousand ships”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The word is frequent in Alfonso X's prose, in the Poema de Alfonso XI, in a glossary of about 1400 (classis: flota o navío) and in Nebrija, and it became very common after the discovery of America.^[2][12] The Diccionario de Autoridades notes that la flota meant in particular the fleet sent each year to New Spain, as opposed to the galeones that sailed to Peru.^[7] The figurative sense “crowd, great number” is found in Pedro Tafur (about 1440) and in Luis de Granada, and Román found it still in use in Chile.^[2][7][13]

In 1817 the Academy defined flota as a group of merchant ships, and called the war fleet an old sense; in 1869 it said this sense was going out of use.^[14][15] The DLE now also applies it to a group of aircraft and to the vehicles of a company.^[4] Regional senses include “intercity bus” in Bolivia and Colombia, “boast” in Colombia, “crowd, rabble” in Ecuador, Honduras and Mexico, and a plasterer's float in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Canaries.^{[4][16][17][18][19]} The diminutive flotilla passed into French as flottille, which Corominas dates to 1723 and the DHLF to 1691.^[2][5]

Timeline

• c. 1260 – first record, in the Siete Partidas.^[2][3]
• 1270–1284 – in Alfonso X's Estoria de España.^[11]
• 1279 – an order of payment mentions the customs revenues of Seville pora las flotas e pora los castiellos.^[11]
• c. 1350 – the Poema de Alfonso XI has flotas and frotas.^[2]
• c. 1440 – Pedro Tafur uses it for a great number of things or people.^[2]
• 1515 – first record from the Americas, a flota de las canoas in Tierra Firme.^[20]
• 1525 – the verb flotar, from French.^[3]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives the word from Latin fluctus.^[6]
• 1817 – the Academy calls the sense “war fleet” old.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy derives it from flotar.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. The merchant ships of a country, a shipping company or a sea route; a fleet.^[4][21]
2. A group of vessels with a common destination or purpose: Toda la flota volvió a puerto por el temporal.^[4][22]
3. A group of aircraft for a particular service.^[4]
4. The vehicles of a company: una flota de furgonetas de reparto.^[4][21]
5. (Bolivia, Colombia) An intercity bus.^[4][18]
6. (Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico) A crowd, a rabble (caterva).^[4][18]
7. (Cuba) A plasterer's float (llana).^[4][18]

Word family

• flotilla

Related words

• flote
• French flotte
• Portuguese frota

Usage notes

In Colombia echar flotas is “to boast”, and cogerle a alguien la flota is to pretend to believe someone's exaggerations so that events will show the opposite.^[16][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 920
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. flota
4. ^ 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. flota
5. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. flotte
6. ^ 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. 856
7. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 770
8. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 501
9. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 465
10. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. flota
11. ^ 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. flota
12. ^ 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. flota
13. ^ 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. 382
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 420
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 364
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. flota
17. ^ Cuervo, Rufino José (1914), Apuntaciones críticas sobre el lenguaje bogotano, 6th ed., París: A. & R. Roger y F. Chernoviz, p. s.v. flota
18. ^ a b c d Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. flota
19. ^ Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. flota
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. flota
21. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. flota
22. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. flota