isla

Forms

isla f (plural islas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish isla, inherited from Vulgar Latin *īsula, from Latin īnsula (“island”).^[2][3][4][1] Corominas rejects Meyer-Lübke's view that the Spanish word and Portuguese ilha are learned: the REW treats Old French isle and the Catalan word as popular, and there is no reason to judge the Spanish and Portuguese forms otherwise.^[2] Nascentes explains the group ⟨sl⟩ of Spanish and Old French by the loss of /n/ before /s/ and of the vowel after the stress.^[5] Cunha takes the Portuguese word from Catalan, beside the inherited Portuguese ínsua, first recorded in the 13th century.^[6] The learned doublet ínsula dates from the 15th century.^[3][1]

The same Latin word is Catalan illa, French île, Italian isola and Galician insua.^[7][8][1] Coromines explains the Catalan word as an early vocalisation of the /s/ before /l/.^[9] English isle is a cognate, through French, but “island” is not.^[1]

The origin of the Latin word is unknown.^[10][11] The ancients explained it as land lying in the sea, salum, an idea Covarrubias repeated in 1611.^[12][10][1] De Vaan finds a form *en-sal-o- phonetically possible but a poor description of an island, and suggests a loan from an unknown language, which may also have given the Celtic word (Proto-Celtic *enistī) and Ancient Greek νῆσος (nêsos).^[10][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the first record to Berceo, and notes the word as a proper name in charters of 1206 and 1210.^[2][3] The CDH has it earlier, in the Liber regum (c. 1194–1211, in a copy of the early 13th century), which tells how Saint John went off to the islands of Patmos: fo s'end Sant Iohan a las islas de Pathmos.^[13] The Fazienda de Ultramar (c. 1200) says of Zebulun that he will dwell en ysla de mar.^[13]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias in 1611 also called islas houses that stand free with no other building against them.^[12] Autoridades in 1734 gave the sense of a block of houses surrounded by streets, which the DLE still lists beside manzana.^[14][4] The Academy's dictionary of 1899 widened the definition to land surrounded by a lake or a river as well as by the sea.^[15]

In the River Plate and in Bolivia isla is a clump of trees standing alone in open country; in Chile it is land by a river that floods in high water.^[16][17] Recent senses include an area set apart in a station, airport or street, and in Ecuador and the Dominican Republic a stall in the middle of a shopping-centre corridor.^[4][18][19] In Puerto Rico la isla can mean the interior of the country, as seen from San Juan.^[20] The word was borrowed into Tagalog, Cebuano and Basque.^[1]

Timeline

• 1182 – the earliest record in the DEMel, from a charter of Fitero.^[21]
• c. 1194–1211 – the Liber regum speaks of las islas de Pathmos.^[13]
• 1206 and 1210 – Isla as a proper name in charters.^[2]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo, Corominas's first record.^[2][3]
• 1492 – first record of the diminutives isleta and isleo.^[3]
• 1518 – the first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[22]
• 1526 – first record of islote.^[3]
• 1734 – Autoridades records the sense “block of houses”.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. An island: a piece of land surrounded by water on all sides.^[4][1]
2. A city block (manzana), an area of buildings bounded by streets.^[4][1]
3. An area clearly set apart from the space around it, in airports, stations or streets: Esperamos el autobús en la isla del centro de la avenida.^[4][23]
4. A clump of trees or a small wood standing alone, away from any river.^[4][16]
5. (Chile) Land near a river, flooded in earlier years or in high water.^[24][25]

Word family

• islario
• isleño
• islote
• isleta
• aislar

Related words

• insular
• península
• ínsula
• insulina
• Latin īnsula
• English isle

Usage notes

En isla means “separately”, and islas adyacentes are islands that belong to the national territory though away from the mainland.^[4] In the Canary Islands las islas once meant Fuerteventura and Lanzarote in particular.^[26]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 468
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. isla
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. isla
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. ilha
6. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1845
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. insula
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. insula
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. 4, 834
10. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. île
12. ^ 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. 1053
13. ^ 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. isla
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 312
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 568
16. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 970
17. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 127
18. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. isla
19. ^ Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. isla
20. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. isla
21. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. isla
22. ^ 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. isla
23. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. isla
24. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. isla
25. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. isla
26. ^ Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. isla