ala

Forms

ala f (plural alas)^[1] Houaiss records aa in the 14th century and ala and alla in the 15th, for both “wing” and “row, side”.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin āla (“wing; armpit”).^[2][3][4][1] The inherited outcome of the Latin word lost the ⟨-l-⟩ between vowels and became Old Galician-Portuguese aa, plural ⟨aas⟩, as in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Crónica Troiana; it survives as Galician á.^[5][2] Nascentes takes the word to be that old form remade on the Latin one, and Wiktionary calls it a learned borrowing beside the inherited doublet.^[6][1]

The same Latin word is Spanish ala, Catalan ala, Italian ala, Occitan ala and French aile, the French form being a 13th-century remaking of ele.^[1][7]

Houaiss gives the first Latin sense as the joint of the wing or arm, the armpit, a sense the Portuguese word lost by the end of the 15th century.^[2] The OLD reconstructs ⟨*ag-s-lā⟩ and compares Old English eaxl (“shoulder”).^[8] Lewis and Short, following a remark of Cicero's, take it instead as a contraction of axilla (“armpit”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CTA first has ala in the Horto do Esposo, copied between 1390 and 1437.^[10] Houaiss dates both the sense “wing” and the senses “row, file” and “group set apart from others” to the 15th century, and the Galician Historia Troiana has alas for the wings of a serpent.^[2][11]

Semantic evolution

The military sense was established early: Morais (1789) quotes the Crónica de D. João I for an ala as the body of troops on one side of an army, about 300 men when complete, and records pôr em ala “to put in parallel rows” and a ala dos namorados.^[12] The Ala dos Namorados was the band of Portuguese knights in the right wing of the vanguard at the battle of Aljubarrota.^[13] Feijó (1734) says that in the army ala means the same as fileira “file”.^[14] Arraes's phrase arder em ala “to burn in flames” (1589) shows a transferred use.^[5][12]

Houaiss dates the architectural sense “wing of a building” to 1850.^[2] Figueiredo (1899) still knows ala “wing” in Trás-os-Montes, and the slab of slate laid on top of a wall.^[15] Later senses are the faction of a party, the wing of a sports team and its player, the half of a chessboard, and in Brazil the costumed section of a samba school.^[2][1][16]

Timeline

• 14th century – the inherited form aa.^[2]
• c. 1390–1437 – ala in the Horto do Esposo.^[10]
• 15th century – the senses “row, file” and “group set apart”.^[2]
• 1589 – arder em ala in Arraes.^[5]
• 1734 – Feijó equates the military ala with fileira.^[14]
• 1789 – Morais records the military ala and pôr em ala.^[12]
• 1850 – first record of the sense “wing of a building”.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A row, file, line of people or things: Os convidados formaram duas alas à porta da igreja.^[2][4][1]
2. A group within an association, especially a faction of a party: a ala moderada do partido.^[2][4][1]
3. (military) The flank of an army drawn up for battle; a unit that operates on the flank of the main force; half of a battalion.^[2][17][1]
4. (aviation) An aircraft flying beside the leader in formation.^[2][1] (by gender) a wingman.^[2][1]
5. (architecture) A wing of a building, extending on either side of the main body; the side guard of a bridge.^[2][4]
6. (sports) Either side of the attacking line.^[17][1] (by gender) a player in that position, a winger.^[17][1]
7. (chess) Each player's half of the board.^[2][1]
8. (Brazil) A section of a samba school or carnival group whose members wear the same costume.^[16][1]
9. (obsolete) A wing, asa.^[2][13]

Related words

• alado
• alar
• Latin āla
• Spanish ala

Usage notes

Abrir alas means to form rows so as to let someone pass.^[17]

There is also an interjection ala!, the imperative of the verb alar “to haul”: Houaiss dates it to 1871, in Vieira's dictionary, as a command to sailors to haul on a rope, and in Portugal it is used informally to send someone off, “go on, out!”.^{[2][18][13][19]} Older texts have two more words spelt ala: the name of the plant elecampane, from Late Latin, and a word for a bonded labourer in Damão, which Dalgado derives from Konkani and records in 1635.^[20][5][21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. ala
3. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. ala
4. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. ala
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 95
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. ala
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. aile
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. ala
11. ^ Instituto da Lingua Galega, Dicionario de dicionarios do galego medieval (DDGM), ed. Ernesto González Seoane, Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/ddgm, p. s.v. ala
12. ^ a b c Silva, António de Morais (1789), Diccionario da lingua portugueza composto pelo padre D. Rafael Bluteau, reformado, e accrescentado, 2 vols., Lisboa: Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, p. 1, 48
13. ^ a b c Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, revised online edition (2023–) of the Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa Contemporânea (2001), https://dicionario.acad-ciencias.pt, p. s.v. ala
14. ^ a b Feijó, João de Morais Madureira (1734), Orthographia, ou Arte de escrever, e pronunciar com acerto a lingua portugueza, Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. ala
15. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 45
16. ^ a b Aulete, Francisco Júlio Caldas, Dicionário contemporâneo da língua portuguesa (1st ed. 1881), online as Aulete Digital, Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, https://aulete.com.br, p. s.v. ala
17. ^ a b c d Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 381
18. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. ala!
19. ^ Instituto da Lingua Galega, Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués (TLPGP), Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/tesouro, p. s.v. ala
20. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. ala
21. ^ Dalgado, Sebastião Rodolfo (1919–1921), Glossário luso-asiático, 2 vols., Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, p. 2, 450