cada

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin cata (“each, by”), which is from Ancient Greek κατά (katá, “down; along; according to”).^[2][3][1][4] The Greek preposition was used in phrases with a distributive sense, such as “every year”, “three by three” and “one by one”, and Latin took it over in the same use, “every morning” in the Vulgate and “at each hymn” in the Peregrinatio.^[5][6] Nascentes thinks the word spread around the Mediterranean through Greek merchants.^[5]

The same word is Galician cada, Spanish cada and Catalan cada, and it is in the Old Italian cadauno and the Old French chaün “each one”.^[7][8] The French word was replaced by French chacun, from a crossing of quisque (“each”) with catúnum (“one by one”).^[9][9]

Beekes traces the Greek preposition to Proto-Indo-European *km̥t- (“down, with, along”).^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is in the cantigas of the 13th century: the Cancioneiro da Ajuda has cada vez in Martin Soarez, and the satirical cantigas use cada dia “always, every day”, as in Afons' Eanes do Coton's ca me buscades vós mal cada dia “for you seek my harm every day”.^[11] Houaiss and Cunha date it to the 13th century.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Medieval texts already join it with a following word in fixed phrases: cada que “whenever” and cada u “wherever”, both in the cantigas.^[11][12] The Crónica Troiana uses it before a noun, cada home “every man”.^[11]

Bluteau (1712) lists cada hum, cada qual and cada quando “whenever”.^[13] Morais (1789) describes it as an invariable word that takes a singular noun, and also a numeral, as in cada cinco “every five”.^[14] Today it also has an intensive use, in exclamations such as cada uma!, which express surprise at someone's behaviour or words.^[2][15]

Timeline

• 13th century – cada vez, cada dia, cada que and cada u in the cantigas.^[11][2][3]
• c. 1400 – cada in the Santiago fragment of the Flos Sanctorum (witness 1380–1425).^[16]
• 1712 – Bluteau lists cada hum, cada qual and cada quando.^[13]
• 1789 – Morais describes the word as invariable.^[14]
• 1871 – Vieira rejects the derivation from Greek.^[17]

Meanings

Determiner

1. each, every: each member of a group taken one by one: Cada aluno leu um poema.^[2][1][4]
2. With a numeral, the interval at which something repeats: Toma o comprimido de cada oito horas.^[15][4]
3. As an intensifier, in exclamations: Ele tem cada ideia!^[2][1][15]

Pronoun

1. cada um, cada qual: each one, everyone.^[18][1]
2. cada vez mais: more and more;^[15] cada vez que: whenever.^[15]

Word family

• cada um
• cada qual

Related words

• Spanish cada
• Ancient Greek κατά (katá)

Usage notes

Vieira (1871) rejected the Greek etymology found in Morais.^[17] He traced the word to the Latin phrase quisque ad unum “each one”, through an old Portuguese quiscadaun.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. cada
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. cada
4. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. cada
5. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 86
6. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. cata
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1755
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. cata
9. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. chacun
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, p. s.v. κατά
11. ^ a b c d 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. cada
12. ^ Universo Cantigas: Glosario da poesía medieval profana galego-portuguesa, A Coruña: Instituto da Lingua e Literatura (ILLA), Universidade da Coruña, https://www.universocantigas.gal, p. s.v. cada
13. ^ a b Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. cada
14. ^ a b 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, 210
15. ^ a b c d e 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. cada
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. cada
17. ^ a b c Vieira, Frei Domingos (1871–1874), Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da lingua portugueza, 5 vols., Porto: Ernesto Chardron e Bartholomeu H. de Moraes, p. 2, 22
18. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. cada