tabla

Forms

tabla f (plural tablas, diminutive tablilla or tablita, augmentative tablón)^[1] Old Spanish texts also have taula, a form of old Salamanca and of Catalan and Aragonese.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin tabula (“board, plank; gaming board; writing tablet”).^[4][5][6][1] Like fabla from fābula and establo from stabulum, it lost the vowel after the stress, which Lanchetas says had first become /o/.^[7]

The same Latin word is Portuguese tábua, Galician táboa, Asturian tabla, Catalan taula, Occitan taula, French table and Italian tavola.^[2][1][8] In Catalan, Gallo-Romance and Italian it took the sense “table”, which is rare in Old Spanish (Juan Ruiz, the Libro de Apolonio) and was soon lost;^[9] Portuguese and Galician divide the senses between mesa and tábua as Spanish does.^[4] Spanish kept the Latin word for a table, mēnsa, in mesa.^[9]

The origin of tabula is uncertain.^[10][1] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *taþlā- (“board”), perhaps a root *ta- with the instrument suffix Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlo-, and mentions Southern's idea of an s-less form of Proto-Indo-European *steh₂- (“to stand”), with the cognate Umbrian tafle.^[10] Others connect it with taberna.^[1][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds it in a charter of 1112, and it is frequent from the earliest texts.^[4][5] The Fuero de Madrid (1141–1235, in a copy of the first half of the 13th century) fines the board-maker who does not make a tabla de VII palmos, a plank seven spans long.^[12] Berceo uses it of a thin board (tales avié los braços como tabla delgada “her arms were like a thin board”), of a coffin and of the tables of the Law.^[7][12]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's scientific prose already uses tabla for a flat plate of copper or lead, a tablet bearing figures, a list of things in order and a table of numbers for calculation.^[13] Covarrubias (1611) has the tabla de juego, a gaming house.^[14] Autoridades gives the board used for furniture and ships, the table at which the ministers of a court sat (hence ministros de la Tabla and the Tabla del Consejo) and, rarely, the dining table, as in la tabla redonda of King Arthur.^[15][16]

The Academy's dictionaries added the plain part of a pleated garment (1817), a book's index and a list or catalogue in order (1843); Domínguez has a picture painted on a panel and a bed of a kitchen garden.^[17][18][19] In Spanish America the word is recorded from 1512, in Puerto Rico, for planks bought for an apothecary's shop.^[20] In the plural it means the stage, and figuratively a performer's or speaker's experience before an audience.^[1]

Timeline

• 1112 – first record, in a charter.^[4][5]
• 1141–1235 – the Fuero de Madrid regulates the length of planks.^[12]
• c. 1140 – the derivative tablado appears in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[5]
• c. 1236 – Berceo compares thin arms to a board.^[12]
• 1254–1260 – Alfonso X's astronomical works use tablas of numbers.^[13]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin tabula and asser.^[21]
• 1512 – the first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[20]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades records the Tabla del Consejo and the sense “dining table”.^[15]
• 1843 – the Academy adds “index of a book” and “list, catalogue”.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. board, plank: a flat piece of wood, thin and with parallel faces.^[6][1]
2. A flat, thin piece of another rigid material; a slab: una tabla de mármol.^[6][1]
3. The widest face of a beam; the greater dimension of a squared timber.^[6]
4. The part of a garment left without pleats; a box pleat, or the flat strip between its folds.^[6][1]
5. A notice board.^[6]
6. The index of a book.^[6]
7. A list or catalogue of things in order or related to each other: la tabla periódica.^[6][1]
8. A table of numbers for calculation: la tabla de multiplicar.^[6][1]
9. A flattish part of certain parts of the body, as of the chest or thigh.^[6]
10. A wide, calm stretch of a river (tabla de río).^[6][2]
11. (in the plural) The stage; skill or experience on stage or as a public speaker: a ese actor le faltan tablas.^[1]

Word family

• tablado
• tablazón
• tablear
• tablero
• tableta
• tablilla
• tablón
• entablar
• tablazo
• entablillar
• tabletear

Related words

• tabulación
• tabulador
• tabular
• Latin tabula
• Catalan taula
• Portuguese tábua

Usage notes

In Murcia tabla also names a levy collected for irrigation;^[22][23] Corriente derives this word from Andalusian Arabic ṭábl “tax”, through Aramaic from Latin tabella “tablet”, the tablet on which the amounts and the taxpayers were written.^[22][23] Set phrases include tablas de la ley, the tables of the Law of Moses, already in Berceo.^[1][7]

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 García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6523
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. tabla
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 360
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tabla
6. ^ 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. tabla
7. ^ a b c Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 736
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 3202
9. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. tabla
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
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. tabla
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. tabla
14. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1313
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 204
16. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 1062
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 824
18. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 685
19. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 2, 1604
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. tabla
21. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 420
22. ^ a b Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. tabla
23. ^ a b Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. 448