legua

Forms

legua f (plural leguas)^[1] Old Spanish texts write legua, leguas, with the isolated variants lenguas and alegua.^[2] Early documents from the Americas also write légoa.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin leuga (“league”), also spelt leuca, a word of Celtic origin.^[4][5][1][6] The OLD defines it as a Gallic measure of distance equal to 1,500 Roman paces.^[7] Roman writers already called it Gaulish, and Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Celtic *lougā, while noting that the Celtic origin is uncertain: the diphthong is secondary and the word lacks clear Insular Celtic cognates.^[1] The DLE adds that the Celtic word may itself be pre-Roman.^[5] Covarrubias already knew that the word is not Latin, and cited Ammianus Marcellinus for its being Gaulish.^[8]

The Spanish form arose by metathesis of the Latin one.^[9][10] The same word is Portuguese légua, Galician legua, Asturian llegua, Catalan llegua, Old French liue and Italian lega.^[11][1] Old Catalan kept the diphthong, leuga, from the end of the 13th century.^[12] Basque borrowed the word as legoa and lecoa.^[11][13]

Older explanations derived the Latin word from Greek “white”, after the white stones that marked the distances, or from Latin “stone”;^[14] Monlau reports both.^[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) has the plural: aprés son de Valencia, a tres leguas contadas “they are near Valencia, three full leagues away”.^[15][4] The earliest record without a later copy is the Fuero Juzgo (c. 1250–1260), which fines anyone who rides another's animal without the owner's leave by the number of leagues covered.^[15]

Semantic evolution

The value of the league always varied.^[5][16] Nebrija equated the league with 4,000 Roman paces and the French league with 3,000, and Covarrubias with three miles.^[17][18][8] Autoridades counts seventeen and a half Spanish leagues to a degree and defines each as what one walks in an hour; a royal order of 1801 fixed the legal league at 20,000 feet, twenty to the degree.^[19][20] In Berceo, Lanchetas thinks, the word sometimes names the stone that marks the distance rather than the distance.^[10] In the Americas the league had its own values: forty cuadras in Argentina, four kilometres in Bolivia, 4,240 metres in Puerto Rico.^[21][22][23]

Covarrubias records the proverb Por do quiera ay tres leguas de mal camino, said when every way of going about a business proves difficult, and the name traga leguas for a horse that covers much ground.^[8] From 1817 the Academy records the adverbial phrases a legua, a la legua, a leguas, “from very far”, now “plainly, obviously”.^[20][24]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid (in a 14th-century copy) counts distances in leagues.^[15][4]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar puts Bethlehem two leagues from Jerusalem.^[15]
• c. 1250–1260 – the Fuero Juzgo, the first record without a later copy.^[15]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España uses it as a measure of distance.^[25]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives the Roman, French and common league in Latin terms.^[18]
• 1527 – the first record from the Americas, légoas, in Nicaragua.^[3]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the proverb Por do quiera ay tres leguas de mal camino.^[8]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary records the legal league of 1801 and the phrase a la legua.^[20]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology, Latin leuca.^[26]
• 1899 – the legua de posta is defined as four kilometres.^[27]

Meanings

Noun

1. (historical) A league: a measure of distance that varied by country and region, defined as the way one usually walks in an hour, in the old Spanish system 5,572.7 metres.^[5][1]
2. (figurative, often in the plural) A great distance: Su pueblo queda a leguas de cualquier hospital.^[1][24]

Word family

• tragaleguas

Related words

• Late Latin leuga
• Portuguese légua
• Catalan llegua

Usage notes

Set phrases include legua cuadrada “square league” and legua de posta, the league of four kilometres; the legua marina or legua de veinte al grado is 5,555 metres.^[5][28] A la legua means “plainly, obviously”.^[24] Along the Ribera del Duero legua also names each curved stave of a barrel.^[29]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. legua
5. ^ a b c d e 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. legua
6. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. legua
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1074
9. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
10. ^ a b Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 435
11. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. leuca
12. ^ 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. 5, 134
13. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 2, 433
14. ^ a b Monlau, Pedro Felipe (1856), Diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana (ensayo), Madrid: Imprenta de la Sociedad Literaria y Tipográfica, p. 315
15. ^ 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
16. ^ Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 96
17. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
18. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (c. 1495), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca (facsimile, Madrid: Real Academia Española 1951), p. s.v. legua
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. legua
20. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real
21. ^ Bayo, Ciro (1910), Vocabulario criollo-español sud-americano, Madrid: Hernando, p. 124
22. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1999), Vocabulario de Puerto Rico, critical ed. by Humberto López Morales, Madrid: Arco/Libros (1st ed. 1937), p. 232
23. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. legua
24. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos
25. ^ 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)
26. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 636
27. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 594
28. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial
29. ^ Lamano y Beneite, José de (1915), El dialecto vulgar salmantino, Salamanca: Tipografía Popular, p. 512