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sala

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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word sala

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1206 a Riojan charter in Oelschläger's list More words from the 13th century
Borrowed from
Proto-Germanic *saliz
Ultimate origin
Proto-Germanic *saliz

Pronunciation

  • /ˈsala/, [ˈsa.la][1]

Forms

sala f (plural salas)[1]

Etymology

It is a Germanic word, borrowed from Proto-Germanic *saliz (“hall, house”), the name of a building that consisted of a single large reception room.[2][3][4][1] Corominas thinks it uncertain whether it came into Castilian through Catalan or Gallo-Romance or directly from Gothic, and most probably both currents met.[2][3] Gamillscheg and the REW take it as a Gallo-Romance or Catalan loan; the keeping of /l/ in Portuguese sala and the frequency of the name in Catalan and Aragonese place names support that view.[2] On the other hand, old Portuguese place and personal names have ⟨Sáa⟩, with the regular loss of /l/, from the 12th–13th centuries.[2]

Corominas therefore assumes several centres of spread: Frankish in France and Catalonia, from where it reached Aragon, Lombard and perhaps Ostrogothic in Italy; and Visigothic in the west of the peninsula as far as León.[2] In Castile a weak Visigothic layer would have been overlaid by a chivalric wave from France or Catalonia.[2] The Germanic noun was masculine or neuter; the Romance feminine may be due to the French halle, from Frankish, or to the Romance synonym corte.[2][3] The form Frankish *sal gave French salle, and the Latin texts of the barbarian laws already have the feminine form;[5][1] The same word is Italian sala.[5][5][1]

The Germanic cognates are Old High German sal, Old English sæl, Old Norse salr, Dutch zaal and German Saal.[6][1] Kroonen traces the Proto-Germanic noun to a neuter s-stem identical with Old Church Slavonic село (selo, “field, abode, village”);[6][1] Wiktionary gives Proto-Indo-European *sel- (“human settlement, dwelling”).[6][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DCECH's first record is the name Sala in a Leonese document of 1102, and Oelschläger cites the word in a Riojan document of 1206.[2][3] The CDH's early hits are names too: Sala-thiel, broken over a line in the Liber Regum, and the place Salas in charters of Oña.[7] The DTME dates the common noun from 1240, and the DEMel has it in the Libro de Alexandre.[8][9] In the Libro de buen amor Doña Cuaresma attacks the sleeping guests faza la media noche, en medio de las salas “towards midnight, in the middle of the halls”.[2]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija glossed sala with Latin aula and atrium, and also had sala alta, sala baxa and sala for a public banquet;[10][11][12] Percyvall in 1591 translates it “a hall, a banket”.[10][11][12] The banquet sense is labelled obsolete by the Academy from 1817 on.[13][4] Autoridades defined the word as the main room of the house, where formal visitors are received and business is done, and added the room where judges hear cases and the panel of judges itself; it quotes the guesses that the word came from salir or from Hebrew.[14] The Academy's 1884 edition derived it from Old High German sal “house, dwelling”, and that of 1899 added “room of great size”.[15][16]

Modern senses include a venue for cultural purposes and a hospital ward.[4][8][1] In El Salvador and north-western Argentina sala is the main house of a rural estate, and in Puerto Rico the main room of a country house.[17][18] In some Andalusian towns it is the home of one family in a shared tenement yard.[19] The first record from the Americas is from Mexico in 1532.[20] Tagalog and Cebuano have borrowed sala.[1]

Timeline

  • 1102 – Sala as a proper name in a Leonese document.[2][3]
  • 1206 – a Riojan charter, cited by Oelschläger.[2]
  • 1240 – the DTME's first date.[8]
  • 1250 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses it.[21]
  • c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin aula and atrium.[11]
  • 1532 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico.[20]
  • 1726–1739 – Autoridades records the court senses.[14]
  • 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from Old High German.[15]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The main room of a house; living room: Los invitados esperaban en la sala.[4][1]
  2. In a public building, a large room; hall: sala de espera, sala de máquinas.[4][1]
  3. A building or venue for cultural purposes: sala de conciertos.[4][22]
  4. The room where a court sits; courtroom.[4][1]
  5. (law) The body of judges with jurisdiction over certain matters.[4]
  6. A hospital ward.[8][1]
  7. sala capitular: the chapter house of a cathedral or monastery.[4]
  8. (obsolete) A banquet, party or soirée.[4][23]
  9. (El Salvador, north-western Argentina, rural) The main house of a rural property.[17]

Word family

  • salón
  • saleta
  • antesala

Usage notes

Sala is also a form of the verb salar “to salt”, a different word; the DLE treats them separately.[4] In Chile ¡sala! is said to drive a dog away;[24] Lenz explains it as sale “get out” with ah, not this noun.[24]

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 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. 5, 133
  3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sala
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. sala
  5. ^ a b c Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
  6. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  7. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. sala
  8. ^ a b c d Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. sala
  9. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. sala
  10. ^ 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, p. s.v. sala
  11. ^ a b c Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 412
  12. ^ a b Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 210
  13. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 779
  14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. sala
  15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 951
  16. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 891
  17. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. sala
  18. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. sala
  19. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 561
  20. ^ 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, p. s.v. sala
  21. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. sala
  22. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. sala
  23. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 650
  24. ^ a b Lenz, Rodolfo (1904–1910), Diccionario etimolójico de las voces chilenas derivadas de lenguas indíjenas americanas, Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Cervantes, p. 1285

Related etymologies

  • guardar · also from Proto-Germanic
Cite this entry

“Sala.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/sala. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·