vegada

Forms

vegada f (plural vegadas)^[1] Old Spanish texts write vegada, uegada, begada and, rarely, veguadas, vagadas and uigadas.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish vegada, inherited from Vulgar Latin *vicāta, formed from Latin vicis (“turn, alternation”) with a noun suffix.^[1][3][4] The same Vulgar Latin noun gave Catalan vegada, Occitan vegada, Old Galician-Portuguese vegada and Old French fiee, and survives in dialects of France, the Rhaetian Alps and Italy.^[4][5] Asturian vegada and Aragonese vegada still use it.^[6][1]

Coromines thinks the noun first meant “a round or batch of things done”.^[5] In Catalan it spread early and replaced Old Catalan veu, which had become confusable with the word for “voice”.^[5]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *wik- (“turn”) for the Latin noun, perhaps from an Indo-European root meaning “to tie, turn”.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Auto de los Reyes Magos (c. 1180) has Ueer lo é otra uegada “I shall see it another time”.^[8] Corominas calls it very common from Berceo on.^[4]

Semantic evolution

For centuries vegada competed with its synonym vez, from which it was derived.^[4] Alfonso X's prose uses it for “time, occasion”, with a las vegadas “at times” and otra vegada “again”.^[9] Nebrija still glossed it vez, but by 1535 Juan de Valdés said he would neither say nor write it.^[4][10] Covarrubias called it an old Castilian word, and the Diccionario de Autoridades said it was less used than vez.^[11][12] From 1817 the Academy marked it as old.^[13]

It survives in Zamora and Asturias, and old peasants in Puerto Rico still used it in the 20th century.^[4][14] The Academy now labels it obsolete and limits it to Salamanca and Zamora.^[3] In Asturian it also means a long period of time.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1180 – the Auto de los Reyes Magos has otra uegada.^[8]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses una vegada … otra and a las vegadas.^[9]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses it vez.^[10][15]
• 1535 – Juan de Valdés rejects the word.^[4]
• 1611 – Covarrubias calls it an old Castilian word.^[11]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary marks it as old.^[13]
• 1900 – a poem from Puerto Rico still uses otra vegada.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. (obsolete; still used in Salamanca and Zamora) time, occasion; the same as vez: Esta vegada no te perdono.^[3][1]

Related words

• vez
• Latin vicis
• Catalan vegada

Usage notes

The obsolete phrase a las vegadas meant “at times, sometimes”.^[3][9] In Honduras a masculine vegada is a rural word for a large meadow (vega), a separate formation.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. vegada
3. ^ a b c d 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. vegada
4. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 196
5. ^ a b c 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. 9, 72
6. ^ a b Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. vegada
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. vegada
9. ^ a b c 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. vegada
10. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 428
11. ^ 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. 1373
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 430
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 879
14. ^ a b Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. vegada
15. ^ 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. vegada
16. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. vegada