escala

Forms

escala f (plural escalas)^[1] The 14th-century form is escalla.^[2][3] A private letter of 1669 spells it esquala.^[4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin scāla (“ladder, flight of steps”), a singular that Houaiss calls Late Latin, beside the classical word usually used in the plural, scālae (“steps, staircase, ladder”).^[5][1][6] Cunha and Nascentes also take it from Latin, Nascentes by the learned route.^[2][7] The inherited word from the same Latin source is escada, which came through the old form Old Galician-Portuguese escaada from Late Latin scalāta, a derivative of the Latin noun.^[2][8][1]

The sense “port of call” came by another route.^[7][1] Wiktionary takes it, probably, from Italian scala, which had it from Byzantine Greek σκάλα (skála), itself a borrowing of the Latin word.^[1] The Greek word is recorded for stairs and a ship's gangway.^[9] The DLE derives the same sense of Spanish escala from Italian and Byzantine Greek in the same way.^[10] Nascentes holds that both the nautical and the musical terms came from Italian.^[7] Cunha gives three numbered entries: one for “staircase”, from Latin, one for “port, the time a ship stays in port”, of the 15th century, from the Medieval Latin use of the word, and one for “sequence of musical notes”, of 1858, from Italian.^[2] Niermeyer records the Medieval Latin word with the sense “harbour”.^[11]

The Latin word goes back to *scand-slā, from the verb scandō (“to climb”), and further to Proto-Indo-European *skend-.^[1][12] The Latin word lives on in Catalan escala, Occitan escala, French échelle, Sardinian iscala and Romanian scară.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lorenzo's chronology dates the first record to the Crónica de 1344, which says of a castle that it is so high that no one can set a ladder to it: he tam alte que lhe nõ podem poer escalla.^[3] Houaiss also dates the word to the 14th century, in the sense “ladder, flight of steps”.^[5]

Semantic evolution

From the ladder used against a wall the word came to mean an assault on a town or fortress by ladders: Bluteau (1712–1728) lists it as a military term in levar huma Cidade a escala vista “to take a town by open escalade”, and Morais (1789) adds the sack of a captured town.^[13][14] The DLP still records both senses, the escalade and the licence to plunder given to the soldiers who took a town.^[15]

The sense “port where ships call” and “time a ship stays in port” is dated by Houaiss and Cunha to the 15th century.^[5][2] Feijó (1734) explains fazer o Navio Escala as “to put into a port on the way”.^[16] The sense was later widened to any planned stop of an aircraft or vehicle, and to the time it lasts.^[5]

Bluteau also records the cosmographers' scale, a measure like the architect's petipé used with compasses to find distances on a map.^[13] From this came the modern senses of a graduated line, the proportion of a drawing to the real object, a graded series and a work rota.^[5][17] The musical scale is recorded from 1858.^[5][2]

Timeline

• 1344 – the Crónica de 1344 writes escalla for a ladder set against a castle wall.^[3]
• 15th century – first record of the sense “port of call”.^[5][2]
• 1669 – a private letter spells the word esquala.^[4]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau lists it as a military term and as the cosmographers' scale of distances.^[13]
• 1734 – Feijó explains the nautical phrase fazer escala.^[16]
• 1789 – Morais glosses it as escada and records the sack of a captured town.^[14]
• 1858 – first record of the musical sense.^[5][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (archaic) A staircase or ladder; escada.^[5][18]
2. The ratio between the size of a drawing, map or model and that of the object it shows; the graduated line on a map that shows it: um mapa na escala de 1 para 50 000.^[5][18]
3. A port where ships call to load or unload goods and passengers.^[5][18]
4. A stopover: the stop of a ship, aircraft or other transport on its way, or the time it lasts: O voo fez escala no Recife.^[5][19]
5. A rota: a table fixing the shifts or turns of work of a group of people.^[5][20]
6. A graded series of levels or values; a hierarchy or category.^[5][21]
7. The graduation of a measuring instrument: a escala do termômetro.^[5][20]
8. (music) A scale, a series of notes in order within an octave.^[5][22]
9. (historical) An assault on a town or fortress by ladders, escalada; the licence to plunder given to the troops who took it.^[15][19]

Word family

• escalar

Related words

• escada
• escaleira
• Latin scāla
• Spanish escala
• Italian scala

Usage notes

Figueiredo (1899) has a second entry for escala as the act of scaling, the same as escalada, and notes it in Herculano.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. escada
3. ^ a b c 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. escalla
4. ^ a b CLUL (ed.) (2014), P.S. Post Scriptum: Arquivo Digital de Escrita Quotidiana em Portugal e Espanha na Época Moderna, Lisboa: Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, http://ps.clul.ul.pt, p. s.v. escala
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. escala
6. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. escala
8. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. escada
9. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ 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
11. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
12. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
13. ^ a b c Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. escála
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, 28
15. ^ 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. escala
16. ^ 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. escála
17. ^ a b Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. escala
18. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. escala
19. ^ 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. escala
20. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. escala
21. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 3756
22. ^ 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. escala