marca

Forms

marca f (plural marcas)^[1]

Etymology

In the sense “frontier region” it is borrowed from Medieval Latin marca (“border, march”), the Latin of France, which had it from Frankish *marku (“boundary, border”); it thus reached Spanish by a different route from the sense “sign”.^[2][3][1] Corominas thinks it came through the Latin of Gaul or through Occitan, and Nebrija still marked it as a new word about 1495.^[4][5] Medieval Latin had the word, also as marcha, from the 8th century for a border region under a marquis, and French marche is recorded from 1080.^[6] Wiktionary treats the word as inherited from Late Latin.^[1]

In the sense “sign, mark” Corominas takes the noun from the verb marcar, which he believes came from Italian marcare, itself from a Lombardic *markan (“to mark”) that he reconstructs;^[4][2] Italian is the only Romance language where the words with ⟨a⟩ are old, while French marque and the Occitan forms appear only in the 15th century.^[4][2] He admits that the noun could be the older word, since Old English mearc already meant “sign” in 950.^[4] A third sense, “confiscation, reprisal”, came from the south of France and may have a separate source.^[4]

The Germanic noun is *markō (“boundary, border”), which gave Old High German marka and Old Norse mark.^[7][3][1] It is related to Latin margō (“edge, border”) and to Avestan and Old Irish words for a boundary or district.^[8] The same family gave Portuguese marca, Catalan marca and Italian marca, and in Galician and Portuguese a masculine marco (“boundary stone”), recorded in 1091.^[9][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the frontier sense, in Almerich's Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy), a guide to the Holy Land: Antioch lies en la marca d'Armenia “in the march of Armenia”.^[10][11] The Fuero de Viguera y Val de Funes (c. 1250) uses marcas in the legal sense of seizures made in reprisal.^[10][4]

Semantic evolution

The sense “sign” appears first for the official mark on weights and silver: a law of 1488 orders weights to bear alguna marca conoscida “some known mark”.^[4] Covarrubias in 1611 adds the mark stamped on gold and silver work and on horses of a breed, and the sense “fixed length or size”, as in espadas de la marca and paper de marca mayor.^[12] Autoridades in 1734 still put the territory first, then the measure and the sign.^[13]

Baralt counted marca in the senses “scar, badge, sign, proof” among the borrowings from French of the 17th to 19th centuries.^[4] The modern dictionary adds the trademark and the firm that owns it, a result or record in sport, a fixed point on the coast used in navigation, and a distinctive feature in linguistics.^[3] In the slang of the underworld the word meant “prostitute”.^[3][1]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar speaks of la marca d'Armenia.^[10]
• c. 1250 – marcas “reprisals” in the Fuero de Viguera y Val de Funes.^[10]
• 1488 – a law on weights and coinage uses marca for an official stamp.^[4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija lists marca as a new word, Latin marcha.^[5][4]
• 1525 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico City: cloth that is de marca, of standard quality.^[14]
• 1570 – the BDELC's date for the sense “sign”.^[2]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines the measure and the hallmark.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy derives it from Old High German marc “sign”.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A mark or sign made on someone or something to tell it apart or to show its quality or owner.^[3][1]
2. A brand or trademark: ¿Qué marca de zapatillas usas?^[3][1]
3. A firm known by its brand name.^[3]
4. The act of marking (marcar).^[3]
5. A branding iron or other tool for marking, especially livestock.^[3][1]
6. A mark or trace that does not wear off easily, such as a scar.^[3][1]
7. The standard size something should have.^[3]
8. (history) A march, a frontier territory: la Marca Hispánica.^[3][1]
9. A measurable result in a competition or other activity.^[3]
10. (sports) A record, the best result: Batió la marca nacional de los cien metros.^[3][1]
11. (linguistics) A distinctive feature of a unit that sets it against others; in a dictionary, a label on the use of a word.^[3]
12. (nautical) A fixed point on the coast used to fix a ship's position and course.^[3][1]
13. (underworld slang) A prostitute.^[3][1]

Related words

• marcar
• marco
• marqués
• comarca
• Latin margō
• French marche
• Italian marca

Usage notes

In Bolivia marca also names a rural community of families of common descent and its village;^[16][17] Friederici traces this word to Aymara and the Quechua of Ancash, where marca means “village”.^[16][17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. marcar
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q 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. marca
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 842
5. ^ a b 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
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
8. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
11. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock
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. 1116
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro
14. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 678
16. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer
17. ^ a b Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter