cobertura

Forms

cobertura f (plural coberturas)^[1] Houaiss records cubertura (1257), cobertura (13th century) and cobritura (14th century); Lorenzo adds cobretura from the 15th century.^[2][3] Barbosa (1611) also gives a form cobertoura.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin coopertūra (“a covering”), written Old Galician-Portuguese cubertura and Old Galician-Portuguese cobertura in the oldest texts.^[2][5][1][6] The Latin noun was formed from coopertum, the supine of cooperiō (“to cover”), with the suffix -tūra.^[2][1]

Vieira, Figueiredo and Silva Bastos instead explained the word as a Portuguese formation from coberto or coberta with the suffix -ura.^[7][8][9] The modern etymological dictionaries derive it directly from the Late Latin noun.^[2][5][10]

The same Late Latin word is Galician cobertura, Spanish cobertura, Catalan cobertura, French couverture (through Old French coverture) and Italian copertura.^[1][11][12] In Medieval Latin it meant “blanket”, “roofing” and “armour”.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

R. Lorenzo's chronology gives a document of 1257 with ataude cum cubertura de iij uaras d' estanforth “a coffin with a covering of three yards of estanforth cloth”, and a translation of a document of 1228 with de cubertura de una color “of a covering of one colour”.^[3] The Cantigas de Santa Maria use the word both for a covering and, figuratively, for the Virgin as dos coytados cobertura, the shelter of the afflicted.^[3] Cunha glosses the 13th-century word as “cover, covering”.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In the Crónica Troiana the plural coberturas are the ornamental caparisons of horses.^[3] Cardoso (1569) and Barbosa (1611) translate the word with Latin words for a lid or covering.^[14][4] Vieira (1871) adds a ceremonial sense: the act of the grandees of Spain covering their heads before the king for the first time.^[7] The original Caldas Aulete records the body of a wine and the financial sense, a deposit that guarantees a payment, as in cheque sem cobertura “a cheque without funds”.^[15]

Houaiss marks the military and sporting sense, protection given to others under attack, as figurative; other modern senses are the news coverage of an event and insurance cover.^[2][16][1] In Brazil the word also names the penthouse built on the roof slab of a building, and the covering of a stallion or bull is a farming sense recorded in Portugal and in Rio Grande do Sul.^[2][10][17]

Timeline

• 1257 – cubertura in a document.^[2][3]
• 13th century, second half – the Cantigas de Santa Maria have cobertura.^[3]
• 1518 – the Espelho de Cristina uses the word twice.^[18]
• 1569 – Cardoso enters Cobertura.^[14]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists cobertura and cobertoura.^[4]
• 1871 – Vieira records the ceremonial covering of the grandees of Spain.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of covering (cobrir); covering.^[2][6]
2. Anything that covers something: a roof, lid, cover or veil; a coating or revestimento.^[2][6]
3. The icing or topping of a cake: bolo com cobertura de morango.^[15][1]
4. (finance) Funds that guarantee a payment or a commercial operation: um cheque sem cobertura.^[2][16]
5. (military, sports) Protection or support given to others under attack; in football, covering a team-mate's space.^[2][1]
6. (journalism) The coverage of an event by the press, radio or television.^[2][16][1]
7. (insurance, telecommunications) The extent of what an insurance policy, or of the area a signal, covers.^[1][19]
8. (Brazil, architecture) A penthouse built on the roof slab of a building.^[2][15]
9. (mathematics) A family of sets whose union contains a given set.^[2][1]
10. (ecology) The share of a surface covered by an organism or group of organisms.^[2]
11. (farming) The covering of a female animal by a male.^[10][17]

Related words

• coberta
• coberto
• cobertor
• cobrimento
• cobrir
• descoberto
• Galician cobertura

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 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. cobertura
3. ^ a b c d e f 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. cobertura
4. ^ a b c Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. cobertura
5. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. cobertura
6. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. cobertura
7. ^ 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, 257
8. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. cobertura
9. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. cobertura
10. ^ 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. cobertura
11. ^ 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. cobertura
12. ^ Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. cobertura
13. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. coopertura
14. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. cobertura
15. ^ a b c 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. cobertura
16. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. cobertura
17. ^ a b Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. cobertura
18. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. cobertura
19. ^ Michaelis: Moderno Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, São Paulo: Melhoramentos (online as Michaelis Dicionário Brasileiro da Língua Portuguesa, https://michaelis.uol.com.br), p. s.v. cobertura