masa

Forms

masa f (plural masas)^[1] Careful medieval texts write massa with ⟨ss⟩, as Alfonso de Palencia and Nebrija do, though manuscripts often neglect the distinction.^[2] Autoridades still spells it massa in 1734.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish massa, inherited from Latin massa (“lump, mass; dough”).^[2][4][5][1] The word is in general use at all periods and common to all the western Romance languages: Portuguese massa, Catalan massa, French masse and Italian massa.^[2][6][7]

Latin borrowed the word early from Ancient Greek μᾶζα (mâza, “barley cake”).^[8][5][1] Wiktionary suggests it came possibly through Etruscan, and notes that early Latin regularly rendered Greek ⟨ζ⟩ as ⟨ss⟩.^[1] The Greek noun belongs to μάσσω (mássō, “to knead”), from Proto-Indo-European *meh₂ǵ- (“to knead”).^[9][1] It meant a barley cake first and later a lump or mass of metal.^[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record is in the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (1218–c. 1250), which forbids taking masa “dough” as a pledge.^[12] Corominas's first record is in Berceo, and the Breve diccionario dates the word 1220–1250.^[2][4] In the Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos (c. 1236, in a late 13th-century copy) a woman wants to make her dough, roll it thin and take it to the oven: quiso fer su massa, delgaçar e premir, ir con ella al forno.^[12]

Semantic evolution

Already in the 13th century the word had a wider sense: Alfonso X's Lapidario compares a softened stone to dough, and his Estoria de España calls three hundred martyrs la massa blanca “the white multitude”.^[13] In Spanish it especially meant sweet paste, as when Don Quixote says that for Dulcinea alone he is de masa y alfeñique “of dough and sugar paste”.^[2] Autoridades (1734) records mortar of plaster or lime, molten metal and the whole of an estate taken together.^[3] In Aragon masa also meant a farmhouse with its land.^[14][15] Medieval Latin massa likewise meant an estate.^[16]

The physical sense, the quantity of matter in a body, first appears in the Academy's dictionary in 1843.^[17] Alemany (1917) calls the plural las masas “the common people, the working class” a much-used neologism.^[18] In the Americas the word means a small cake or biscuit in the River Plate, boneless meat in Cuba, and maize dough in Mexico.^[19][20][21] English has borrowed the word as masa.^[1]

Timeline

• 1218–c. 1250 – the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes has masa in a list of things not to be taken as a pledge.^[12]
• c. 1236 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos has massa “dough”.^[12][2]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España uses massa for a multitude of martyrs.^[13]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives massa as a general noun and massa de harina “dough”.^[22]
• 1564 – an early record from the Americas, in Mexico, of the whole body of a community.^[23]
• 1569 – the derivative amasijo is first recorded.^[4]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as flour mixed with water to make bread.^[24]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary gives the physical sense, the quantity of matter in a body.^[17]
• 1917 – Alemany records las masas “the masses” as a neologism.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. (physics) mass: the quantity of matter in a body, measured by its inertia; its unit is the kilogram.^[5][1]
2. A thick, soft paste made by mixing a liquid with a powder.^[5][25]
3. dough: flour mixed with water to make bread and other food: Deja reposar la masa una hora.^[5][1]
4. Pastry (pastel): a dough of flour and fat baked in the oven.^[5]
5. A bulk, volume or gathering; the whole of an estate or other property taken together: masa de la herencia.^[5]
6. A great body of people, which by its number can influence events; in the plural, the common people: las masas.^[5][25]
7. (electricity) The metal frame of a machine or apparatus, usually connected to earth.^[5]
8. (River Plate, Ecuador) A small cake or biscuit.^[5][19]

Word family

• masilla
• masita
• amasar
• macizo
• masar
• masudo
• masera
• amasijo

Related words

• masivo
• Latin massa

Usage notes

Set phrases include en masa “all together, in a body” and con las manos en la masa “red-handed”.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 868
3. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 508
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. masa
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. masa
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5396
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4189
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses
12. ^ 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, p. s.v. masa
13. ^ 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. masa
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 559
15. ^ Borao, Jerónimo (1908), Diccionario de voces aragonesas, 2nd ed., Zaragoza: Imprenta del Hospicio Provincial
16. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 464
18. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1096
19. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer
20. ^ Suárez, Constantino (1921), Vocabulario cubano, La Habana: Librería Cervantes / Madrid: Perlado, Páez y Compañía
21. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (2001), Diccionario breve de mexicanismos, México: Academia Mexicana / Fondo de Cultura Económica
22. ^ 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, p. s.v. masa
23. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies
24. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1120
25. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos