grade

Forms

grade f (plural grades)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin crātis (“wickerwork, hurdle”), through the Vulgar Latin form of the word, written Old Galician-Portuguese grade in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1]

The same Latin word is Galician grade and Spanish grada.^[4][5] Corominas notes the form in ⟨-e⟩ of Asturias, Galicia and Portugal beside the Castilian one in ⟨-a⟩.^[4][4][5] Catalan grada and Italian grata belong here too.^[1]

In Latin the word meant a construction of wickerwork, a hurdle, and the derived verb crātiō meant to harrow with brushwood.^[6][7] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *krāti- (“wickerwork”) and compares hurd (“hurdle”) and the Gothic word for “door”;^[7][1] Wiktionary gives *hurdiz and an uncertain Proto-Indo-European *kréh₂-tis, perhaps of substrate origin.^[7][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Long before the vernacular texts, a Latin document of 1113 has a place name mons Grade.^[8] In the Cantigas de Santa Maria the devil holds souls in his grade, his cage or prison: jaz o demo na grade “the devil lies in the cage”.^[8] A cantiga d'escarnho by Afonso Mendez de Besteiros compares someone to a dog let out of its grade, its cage.^[8][9]

Semantic evolution

The 16th- and 17th-century dictionaries give two things: a lattice or grille, Latin clathri (Cardoso 1569), and the farmer's harrow, grade pera gradar terras (Barbosa 1611).^[10][11] Bluteau puts the harrow first, a frame of six bars with teeth of wood or iron that breaks the clods and covers the seed.^[12] Morais (1813) adds the painter's stretcher, the grille of the nuns' parlour and the rack in a stable.^[13]

From the grille of the parlour came “a visit to a nun or a prisoner” and the place where it happened.^[2][14] Anything laid out in a grid became a grade: a timetable, a television schedule, a pay scale.^[2] In Brazil as grades is informal for prison, and atrás das grades means “behind bars”.^[2] In electronics the word names the control grid of a valve.^[2] Wiktionary lists borrowings into Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali and Sinhalese.^[1]

Timeline

• 1113 – mons Grade, a place name in a Latin document.^[8]
• 13th century – grade “cage” in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[8][2]
• c. 1525 – first record in the CTA prose corpus, in the Memorial da Infanta Santa Joana.^[15]
• 1569 – Cardoso translates Grade as Latin clathri, a lattice.^[10]
• 1611 – Barbosa records the harrow and the verb gradar.^[11]
• 1813 – Morais lists the painter's frame and the nuns' parlour.^[13]
• 1899 – Figueiredo adds the crate for carrying furniture and the mould for tiles and bricks.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. A grille or railing: a frame of parallel or crossed bars of metal or wood, with gaps between them, that closes off or protects a place.^[2][17]
2. The grille that separates prisoners or cloistered nuns from their visitors; the parlour where it stands; a visit made there.^[2][14]
3. A harrow, drawn over ploughed land to break up clods and cover the seed.^[2][18]
4. A grid or table, such as a timetable or programme schedule.^[2]
5. A crate of laths for carrying furniture, birds or bottles.^[19][20]
6. The stretcher on which a painter fixes the canvas.^[2][17]
7. A mould for tiles or bricks; a hot iron grid for cauterising animals' wounds; a currycomb.^[2][17]
8. (electronics) The control grid of a valve.^[2]
9. (Brazil, informal; in the plural) prison: atrás das grades.^[2][21]

Word family

• gradar
• gradeado
• gradeamento
• gradil
• engradar
• engradado

Related words

• Latin crātis
• Galician grade
• Spanish grada

Usage notes

Aurélio also lists a masculine grade borrowed from English, a term of civil engineering for a gradient.^[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 i j k l m n Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. grade
3. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. grade
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. grada
5. ^ a b Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. grade
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. crātis
7. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b c d e 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. grade
9. ^ 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. grade
10. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. grade
11. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. grade
12. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. grade
13. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 95
14. ^ 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. grade
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. grade
16. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 674
17. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. grade
18. ^ 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. grade
19. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 4754
20. ^ Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. grade
21. ^ 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. grade