guarda

Forms

guarda m or f by sense (plural guardas)^[1] Old Spanish texts also spell it garda and goarda.^[2]

Etymology

It is probably a postverbal noun from Spanish guardar (“to guard, keep”), though it may also have been taken directly from the Germanic noun *warda (“watch, guard; lookout post”).^[3][4][1] The DLE derives it from the Germanic noun.^[5] Corominas notes that the noun had very little life in Italian, while the verb is far more developed in all the Romance languages, which suggests that the verb was borrowed first and the noun followed later, either as a second, less general loan or as a formation within Romance.^[3]

guardar itself goes back to the Germanic verb *wardōn (“to watch over, guard”), which Vulgar Latin had already taken over from the common West Germanic of the time, so that it is shared by all the western Romance languages.^[3][1] The Germanic noun was itself formed from a verb meaning “to heed, pay attention”.^[3][5]

The same noun is Portuguese guarda, Catalan guarda and French garde, and older Italian also had guarda.^[3][1] Its Germanic relatives include Old English weard (“ward, guard, watch”), Old High German warta (“watch, guard”) and Old Norse varða (“beacon, cairn”).^[6] The French noun is therefore a cognate of the English word ward.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the noun to a charter of 1129 in Oelschläger's list, and then to Berceo.^[3][4] In the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy) it means “keeping, safe custody”: Aaron is told to set a measure of manna before the Lord por guarda a vuestras generaciones “to be kept for your generations”.^[7] The Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (1218–c. 1250) has a chapter dela guarda delas vinnas “on the guarding of the vineyards”.^[7]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word named both the act of keeping or guarding and the person who does it: Berceo praises the great care a shepherd gave his flock, and speaks of the guardas who kept watch at the sepulchre.^[7][8] Alfonso X's prose uses it for the soldiers posted to guard cities, for watch and custody, for the guardianship of orphans' property and for the keeping of a law.^[9]

By 1611 Covarrubias listed the keeper of the vineyards and of the woods, the king's guard, the guards at ports and city gates, and the wards inside a lock that stop any key but the right one.^[10] The Academy later added the two outer sticks of a fan and the blank leaves that bookbinders place at the beginning and end of a book, now usually in the plural.^[11][5] The senses “scarcity” and “place where something was kept” are now obsolete.^[5]

In Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay a guarda is the employee who checks the passengers' tickets on public transport; in Argentina it was the tram conductor.^[12][13][14] In Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Peru, Chile and Uruguay the feminine noun also names a decorative band or trim on cloth.^[12] In Andalusia it is the sheath of a pruning knife.^[5][15]

Timeline

• 1129 – first record, in a charter in Oelschläger's list.^[3][4]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar uses guarda for “safe keeping”.^[7]
• c. 1236 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos speaks of the shepherd's guarda of the flock.^[7]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España calls the knights stationed in the cities guardas.^[9]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses guarda, the person who guards, as Latin custos.^[16]
• 1515 – the first record in the Americas, in Tierra Firme: men para la guarda del governador “for the governor's guard”.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias lists the guards of vineyards, woods, ports and the king, and the wards of a lock.^[10]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary lists the fan sticks and the bookbinder's blank leaves.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy first gives an etymology, “de guardar”.^[18]
• 1903 – a strike in Buenos Aires concerns the pay of the tramway guardas and conductors.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. (masculine or feminine) A guard or keeper: a person in charge of looking after something, such as a park, a farm or a forest: El guarda cerró la verja del parque al anochecer.^[5][1][19]
2. (feminine) The act of keeping or custody something.^[5]
3. (feminine) guardianship, tutela.^[5]
4. (feminine) The observance of a command, law or statute.^[5]
5. (feminine) A nun who accompanies men visiting a convent to make sure that proper decorum is kept.^[5]
6. (feminine, card games) A low card kept to protect a better one.^[5]
7. (feminine, usually in the plural) Each of the two outer sticks of a fan; each of the blank leaves at the beginning and end of a book, an endpaper; the wards of a lock or of a key.^[5][1]
8. (feminine) The guard of a sword.^[5]
9. (masculine or feminine, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay) A ticket inspector on public transport.^[12][1]
10. (feminine, parts of Latin America) A decorative band or trim on a fabric or garment.^[12]

Related words

• guardia
• guardián
• aguardar
• Portuguese guarda
• French garde
• English ward

Usage notes

Guarda is masculine or feminine for the person (el guarda, la guarda), and feminine in its other senses.^[5][1] Set phrases include guarda jurado, a sworn guard appointed by the authorities at the request of a company or private owners, and ángel de la guarda “guardian angel”.^[5][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. guarda
3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 246
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. guardar
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o 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. guarda
6. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 448
7. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. guarda
8. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 397
9. ^ 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. guarda
10. ^ 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. 945
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 453
12. ^ 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. guarda
13. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 453
14. ^ a b Garzón, Tobías (1910), Diccionario argentino, Barcelona: Imprenta Elzeviriana de Borrás y Mestres, p. 234
15. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 307
16. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 358
17. ^ 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. guarda
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 544
19. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. guarda