guarda

Forms

guarda m or f by sense (plural guardas)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese had both guarda and garda.^[2][3] Feijó (1734) still lists the spelling goarda.^[4] The noun is feminine for the act and for the body of guards, masculine or feminine for the person who guards.^[1][5]

Etymology

Houaiss and the DLP explain it as a back-formation from Portuguese guardar.^[6][5] Cunha and Aurélio prefer a direct origin: since the noun exists in several Romance languages, it may come from Medieval Latin *guarda, from Proto-Germanic *warda (“watch, guard”).^[2][7] Cunha also treats the masculine noun “watchman”, which he finds from the 15th century, as the feminine noun with a change of gender.^[2]

The verb itself is from Medieval Latin guardō, itself from *wardon (“to keep watch”).^[2][8] Corominas, for the Spanish verb, connects the Germanic verb with the noun “watch, guard” and compares Old High German warta, Old English weard and Old Norse varða.^[9] Orel lists Old Saxon warda (“guard, post”) among the descendants of the Germanic noun.^[10]

The Spanish counterpart is guarda, which Corominas dates to 1129 and derives from the Germanic noun or from the verb.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the noun to the 13th century, Cunha in the sense “act or effect of guarding, watch”.^[6][2] The troubadours used it for the watcher or guardian a lady might keep, as in a cantiga where the speaker says she has no guards with her but her own weeping eyes: E nullas gardas migo non trago, / ergas meus ollos que choran ambos.^[3] The phrase meter guarda meant “to pay heed, look after”.^[12][3]

Semantic evolution

From watching and care the noun came to mean the service of guarding and the people who carry it out.^[6] Cunha dates the masculine guarda “watchman” to the 15th century, and the CTA corpus first has the word in the Vida de Santo Aleixo, in a witness of 1416.^[2][13] Cardoso (1569) and Barbosa (1611) gloss it with Latin custodia, Pereira (1697) with custos “guardian”.^[14][15][16] Bluteau (1712–1728) defines the person who has someone or something in his keeping and the company of soldiers who guard the king.^[17] Morais (1813) has the anjo da guarda “guardian angel” and the corpo de guarda “guardhouse”.^[18]

Technical senses followed: the guard of a sword, a guard position in fencing, the flyleaf of a book and the spur a pruner leaves on a vine are all in Figueiredo (1899).^[19] Today the masculine and feminine noun also means a police officer, and in Paraíba guarda is the leather trousers of the cowherds.^[1][20] The noun gave compounds with guarda- such as guarda-costas and guarda-marinha, and it passed into Hindi, Gujarati, Indonesian and Javanese.^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century – first record of guarda “watch, guarding”, also spelt garda.^[6][2]
• 15th century – the masculine guarda “watchman”.^[2]
• 1416 – guarda in the Vida de Santo Aleixo.^[13]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses Guarda as Latin custodia.^[14]
• 1697 – Pereira glosses it as custos “guardian”.^[16]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau describes the king's guard.^[17]
• 1813 – Morais lists anjo da guarda and corpo de guarda.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. (feminine) The act of guarding; watch, care, custody: deixou os filhos à guarda da avó.^[6][21]
2. (feminine) Protection, shelter, favour.^[6][7]
3. (feminine) A body of soldiers or police that guards a place or a person; the service they do: a guarda do palácio.^[6][22][1]
4. (masculine or feminine) A person whose job is to watch over a place, a prisoner or the public order; a guard or watchman;^[5][1] (informal) a police officer.^[5][1]
5. (fencing, boxing) A defensive stance.^[5][7]
6. The part of a sword or dagger that shields the hand.^[21][22]
7. (bookbinding) A flyleaf, each leaf at the start or end of a bound book.^[7][1]
8. A spur that the pruner leaves on a vine.^[7][19]
9. (Paraíba) Leather trousers worn by cowherds.^[20]

Word family

• guarda-chuva
• guarda-costas
• guarda-marinha
• guarda-redes
• guarda-roupa
• guarda-sol
• guarda-lamas
• guarda-corpo

Related words

• guardar
• aguardar
• guardião
• Spanish guarda

Usage notes

Guarda is also the name of a city and district in the Beira region of Portugal.^[3][1] The city is already named in a cantiga d’amigo, where a girl complains that her friend is long in coming back from Guarda.^[3][12]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. guardar
3. ^ a b c d e 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. guarda
4. ^ 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. guarda
5. ^ a b c d e 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. guarda
6. ^ a b c d e f g Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. guarda
7. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. guarda
8. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. guardar
9. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 246
10. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 448
11. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. guardar
12. ^ 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. guarda
13. ^ a b Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. guarda
14. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. guarda
15. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. guarda
16. ^ 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. guarda
17. ^ a b Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. guarda
18. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 104
19. ^ a b Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 684
20. ^ a b Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. guarda
21. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. guarda
22. ^ 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. guarda