cura

Forms

cura f (plural curas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin cūra (“care; management; medical treatment”).^[2][3][4][1] The DLP treats the feminine noun, “healing”, as a back-formation from Portuguese curar and only the masculine “priest” as the Latin word, and Nascentes, in his fuller dictionary, leaves open whether it is the Latin noun or a deverbal noun of the verb.^[5][6] The priest is so called because he has the cure, the spiritual care, of his parishioners' souls.^[7][8] Bluteau and Vieira derive the masculine from Late Latin cūrātus, a word for the priest.^[9][10]

The same Latin word is Galician cura, Spanish cura, Catalan cura, French cure, Italian cura and Romanian cură.^[1][11] The Latin noun goes back to *kʷoizā; de Vaan connects it, with doubts, with *kʷeys- (“to heed”), a root well represented in Celtic.^[12][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest records, in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, have the Latin sense “care, heed”: e non ouvesse d'al cura “and had no care for anything else”.^[7] The sense “parish, benefice” is in a cantiga of Estevan da Guarda about a man who cobrou priorado / u ten lazeira en logar de cura “got a priory, where he has misery in place of a benefice”.^[7][13] “Priest” is in a cantiga of Afonso Sanchez, batiçar queredes / vosso criad' e cura non avedes “you want to baptise your ward and have no priest”, and medical “treatment” in the Crónica Troiana (14th century).^[7][14]

Semantic evolution

The DDGM traces the four medieval senses: “care”, from the 13th century until the 15th;^[7] “parish”, also from the 13th;^[7] “priest” and “cure of a sick person” from the 14th, the two senses that have lasted.^[7] Cunha dates them in the same way.^[3] A Galician document of 1444 says of a surgeon that he had made boas curas “good cures”.^[7] Machado's dictionary had “priest” only from the 16th century.^[7]

The dictionaries from Pereira (1697) on give the medical sense, and Morais (1789) adds cura radical “complete cure” as against palliative treatment.^[15][16] From the medical sense came the figurative “remedy, solution” and the technical senses of drying and seasoning: the curing of cheese and sausages, of wood, of concrete, the bleaching of washing in the sun, and, in Brazil, the fermentation of cacao seeds.^[2][17]

Timeline

• 13th century – cura “care” in the Cantigas de Santa Maria;^[7][2] “parish” in a cantiga of Estevan da Guarda.^[7][2]
• 14th century – “priest” and “medical treatment”.^[7][3]
• c. 1350 – cura in the Trasladação de S. Nicolau (14th-century witness).^[18]
• 1395 – Galician clerigos ... que non tenan curas, clergy without parishes.^[7]
• 1444 – boas curas of a surgeon in a Galician document.^[7]
• 1697 – Pereira glosses Cura, que faz o medico as Latin curatio.^[15]
• 1789 – Morais has the priest and the medical cure, with cura radical.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. (medicine) The act or process of curing; recovery of health: esta febre tem cura.^[2][1][19]
2. (medicine) A course of treatment: cura de águas.^[2][20]
3. (figurative) A remedy, solution; the correction of a fault.^[2][21]
4. Bleaching of washing in the sun; the seasoning of wood or concrete.^[2]
5. The curing of cheeses, sausages and other foods by drying or smoking.^[2][22]
6. (chemistry) curing: a physical or chemical change brought about by heat or chemicals, as in leather, rubber or tobacco.^[2]
7. (obsolete) A parish.^[2]
8. (masculine) A parish priest, especially of a village; a curate.^[2][5][21]

Related words

• curar
• curador
• curatela
• curativo
• incurável
• procurar
• Latin cūra
• Spanish cura

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. cura
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. cura
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. cura
5. ^ a b 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. cura
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. s.v. cura
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. cura
8. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 295
9. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. cura
10. ^ 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, 671
11. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ 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. cura1
14. ^ 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. cura2
15. ^ a b Pereira, Bento (1697), Thesouro da lingoa portuguesa, in the 1697 edition of his Prosodia (1st ed. 1647; CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. cura
16. ^ 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, 355
17. ^ 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. cura
18. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. cura
19. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. cura
20. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 2636
21. ^ a b 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. cura
22. ^ 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. cura