cela

Forms

cela f (plural celas)^[1] Houaiss records çela and cella in the 14th century.^[2] Morais (1789) and Vieira (1871–1874) head the word cella, and Vieira calls cela a bad spelling.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is from Latin cella (“storeroom, small room”), written Old Galician-Portuguese cela in the oldest texts.^[2][5][6][1] In Classical Latin the word meant a store or larder,^[7][8] and in Medieval Latin a monk's or nun's dwelling and a small monastery.^[9] Nascentes notes that Portuguese narrowed its meaning.^[10] Houaiss compares célula.^[2]

The same Latin word is Spanish celda, Italian cella, Catalan cel·la and French celle.^[10][1] Corominas considers the Spanish word a learned borrowing, first recorded about 1400, with an older form spelt like the Latin at the end of the 13th century.^[11][12]

De Vaan reconstructs a Proto-Italic *kēlā- and, with a question mark, a root Proto-Indo-European *ḱēl- (“hiding”);^[7] Wiktionary gives the root the sense “to cover” and leaves the exact formation open.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Cantigas de Santa Maria a cela is the cell of a hermit or a recluse: one cantiga tells of a cela to be built d'obra de Paris “of Paris work”, another of what a hermit saw inside sa cela “his cell”.^[13] Houaiss dates the sense “room of a religious in a convent” to the 13th century as well.^[2]

Semantic evolution

From the monk's room the word spread to any small room or bedroom, and in the old language also to a small house, a farmhouse working the lands of a monastery and a house where women lived a life of penance.^[2] In the Horto do Esposo (about 1430) it is still a religious word.^[14] The prison sense came with the cellular prisons: Caldas Aulete defines it as a room for one person in the penitentiaries.^[15][2] Architecture took it for the inner chamber of a classical temple, and beekeeping for each cavity of a honeycomb.^[2][16]

Timeline

• 1200s – first records, in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[2][5][13]
• 1300s – the spellings çela and cella.^[2]
• c. 1430 – cela in the Horto do Esposo (witness 1390–1437).^[14]
• 1789 – Morais heads the word cella.^[3]
• 1871 – Vieira calls cela a bad spelling of cella.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A small bedroom; an alcove (alcova).^[2][16]
2. The room of a friar or nun in a convent.^[2][17][1]
3. A prison cell.^[2][17][1]
4. Any very small room; a cubicle.^[2][18]
5. (architecture) The inner chamber of a classical temple, open only to the priests.^[2]
6. (beekeeping) Each cavity of a honeycomb.^[2][17]

Related words

• célula
• celeiro
• Latin cella
• Spanish celda

Usage notes

Cela is pronounced like sela, a noun and a form of the verb selar, and the dictionaries refer from one to the other.^[16][15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. cela
3. ^ 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, 252
4. ^ a b 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, 162
5. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. cela
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. cela
7. ^ 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, p. s.v. cella
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. cella
9. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. cella
10. ^ 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. 106
11. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. celda
12. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 19
13. ^ a b 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. cela
14. ^ a b Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. cela
15. ^ 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. cela
16. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. cela
17. ^ 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. cela
18. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. cela