hora

Forms

hora f (plural horas)^[1] The oldest texts write ora;^[2][3] hora, with the Latin ⟨h⟩, appears in the 14th century, and orra is recorded in 1420.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin hōra (“hour; time, season”), written Old Galician-Portuguese ora in the oldest texts.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin word is from Ancient Greek ὥρα (hṓra, “season, time of day, hour”), as Houaiss, Cunha and Nascentes agree.^[2][3][4][5]

The same Latin word is Galician hora, Spanish hora, Catalan hora, Italian ora, French heure and Romanian oară.^[6][1]

Beekes derives the Greek noun from an Indo-European word for “year”, Wiktionary's Proto-Indo-European *yóh₁r̥ (“year, season”), which also gave jār “year” and the English word year.^[5][1] He thinks it probably contains the root *Hieh₁- (“to send”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the noun to the 13th century, in the spelling ora, from the slips of Cunha's index of medieval Portuguese;^[2][3] Cunha's dictionary likewise has ora in the 13th century and hora in the 14th.^[2][3] In the CTA corpus of medieval prose the spelling hora first appears in the Vida do Cativo Monge Confesso, in a witness of 1416.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Latin hōra was one twelfth of the daylight or of the night, so its length changed with the season.^[8] In Medieval Latin the plural horae named the canonical hours and the prayers said at them.^[9] Portuguese kept that plural for a prayer book, a book of hours.^[10][11]

Phrases with the noun became words of their own: em boa hora “at a good hour” gave embora, and em má hora “at an evil hour” was a common curse.^[12] Barbosa already explained embora in 1611 as a shortened em boa hora.^[13] Bluteau defined the hour as the twenty-fourth part of the natural day, sixty minutes long, and Morais (1813) records por hora “for now” and não ver a hora de “to long to”.^[14][15]

Modern Portuguese uses the word for the time of day, a set time or appointment, the right moment, and a distance measured by travelling time.^[2] The word passed into Kabuverdianu as óra, into Papiamentu and Macanese as ora, and into Kimbundu as ola.^[1]

Timeline

• 1200s – ora in the slips of Cunha's index of medieval Portuguese, Houaiss's first date.^[2]
• 1300s – first records of the spelling hora.^[3][2]
• 1416 – hora in the Vida do Cativo Monge Confesso.^[7]
• 1420 – the spelling orra.^[2]
• 1562 – Cardoso's Latin–Portuguese dictionary renders Latin hora and horula as a ora.^[16]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists meya hora “half an hour”, em boa hora and em maa hora.^[13]
• 1755 – Folqman gives the question Que horas saõ? “What time is it?”.^[17]
• 1813 – Morais records por hora “for now”.^[15]
• 1899 – Figueiredo lists the plural horas “prayer book”.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. An hour, a period of sixty minutes, the twenty-fourth part of a day: Esperei duas horas pelo autocarro.^[2][18][1]
2. The time of day counted in hours; also each figure on a clock face, and each stroke a clock strikes.^[2][18]
3. A distance measured by the time it takes to cover it: A aldeia fica a três horas de carro.^[2][19]
4. (chiefly in the plural) The weekly hours of work or teaching that someone must do.^[2]
5. The usual or proper time for an activity: Já passa da hora de dormir.^[2][19]
6. A moment, an occasion; a time fixed in advance, an appointment: marcar hora no cabeleireiro.^[2][20]
7. The right moment, an opportunity: Ainda não é a hora de falar.^[2][18][1]
8. (in the plural) A book of hours, a book of prayers to be said at set times of the day.^[11][21]

Word family

• desoras
• horinha
• embora

Related words

• ora
• horário
• Latin hōra
• Galician hora

Usage notes

Old texts also write hora for the adverb and conjunction ora “now”, which Wiktionary treats as a doublet of this noun: a document of 1268 has e hora me pagaron “and now they paid me”, and Vieira still refers hora as a conjunction to ora.^[22][1][23]

In southern Brazil estar pela hora da morte means “to be extremely expensive”.^[24]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. hora
3. ^ a b c d e f g Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. hora
4. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. hora
5. ^ a b c Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. ὥρα
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. hora
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. hōra
9. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. hora
10. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. hora
11. ^ a b c Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. s.v. hora
12. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. hora
13. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. hora
14. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. hora
15. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 119
16. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1562), Dictionarium juventuti studiosae admodum frugiferum, Coimbra: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. hora
17. ^ Folqman, Carlos (1755), Diccionario portuguez, e latino, Lisboa: Régia Officina Silviana (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. hora
18. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. hora
19. ^ 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. hora
20. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 5014
21. ^ Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. hora
22. ^ 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. hora
23. ^ Vieira, Frei Domingos (1871–1874), Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da lingua portugueza, 5 vols., Porto: Ernesto Chardron e Bartholomeu H. de Moraes, p. 3, 985
24. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. hora