igreja

Forms

igreja f (plural igrejas)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote igreja, egreja, ygreja, eigreja, egleja and igleja, among many other spellings found from the 13th century to the 16th.^[2][3][4][5] From the 18th century to the early 20th writers used both egreja and igreja, until igreja was made the official spelling.^[3] Houaiss explains egreja as an imitation of the Latin spelling in words where e was pronounced i.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin eclēsia, written Old Galician-Portuguese igreja in the oldest texts; the Vulgar Latin word is the popular form of Latin ecclēsia (“assembly; congregation of Christians; church”).^[3][2][1] The Latin word was taken from Ancient Greek ἐκκλησία (ekklēsía, “assembly duly summoned”), from ἐκκαλέω (ekkaléō, “to call forth, summon”).^[2][6][1] Pliny the Younger uses it for the assembly of a Greek city, and Christian Latin generalised it as “the assembly of the faithful”, then the building.^[7][8][9]

The same Latin word is Galician igrexa, Spanish iglesia, Catalan església, Occitan glèisa, French église and Italian chiesa;^[10][1] Meyer-Lübke notes that the Romance forms point to a form with a single c and a long e, which he puts down to the school pronunciation of the early Middle Ages, and that the word replaced basilica in the 5th century in the main areas.^[10][1] Portuguese also has the learned doublet eclésia.^[1]

Houaiss calls the word semi-learned: the change of -cl- to -gr- shows ecclesiastical influence, and the initial i- is the unstressed e of the first syllable.^[2] Leite de Vasconcelos, followed by Nascentes, derived the first syllable from the first c of the Latin word, which dissolved into i, giving Old Galician-Portuguese eigleja and Old Galician-Portuguese eigreja, later reduced to the modern form, with the same loss of an unstressed ei- as in some personal names.^[11] For the Spanish word, Corominas explained the i- by the frequent position of the word after the article la.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Nascentes, after Leite de Vasconcelos, cites a testament of 1193 with the spelling eygleyga, and the form eigreja in a text of 1272.^[11] Houaiss and Cunha date igreja itself to the 13th century, when the cantigas use it for a church building: ca non leixan [e]spital nen egleja “for they spare neither hospital nor church”.^[2][3][4]

Semantic evolution

Barbosa (1611) renders the word with ecclesia, templum and delubrum, and Bluteau (1712) gives a long account of the Catholic Church as the body of all the faithful, with its scriptural names.^[12][13] Morais (1813) separates the congregation of the faithful, the Universal Church, the building, and the clergy.^[14] Modern dictionaries add any Christian denomination and its organisation.^[2][15][1] The word passed into many Portuguese-based creoles (Sãotomense glêza, Kristang and Macanese greza, Kabuverdianu grexa) and, through Portuguese, into Bengali, Gujarati and Acehnese.^[1]

Timeline

• 1193 – the spelling eygleyga in a testament.^[11]
• 1200s – igreja, egreja and ygreja are all recorded.^[2][3]
• 1272 – the spelling eigreja.^[11]
• 1491 – Vida de Santo Elói, the first CTA text with the spelling igreja.^[16]
• 1569 – Cardoso's dictionary has Igreja, “eclesia”.^[17]
• 1700s – the spelling egreja comes into use beside igreja.^[2][3]
• early 1900s – igreja becomes the official spelling.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A church, a building for Christian worship: A igreja da aldeia foi restaurada.^[2][18][1]
2. The community of Christians (cristãos), the whole body of the faithful.^[2][15]
3. (usually capitalised) The Catholic Church, catolicismo: its clergy and faithful, and its hierarchy.^[19][18]
4. A Christian denomination: a Igreja Anglicana.^[2][20][1]
5. Ecclesiastical authority; the clergy.^[18][21]

Word family

• igrejinha
• igrejola
• igrejeiro

Related words

• eclesiástico
• eclésia
• Latin ecclēsia
• Galician igrexa
• Spanish iglesia

Usage notes

Igreja matriz is the main church of a parish.^[19] Aurélio and Michaelis give the irregular diminutives igrejola and igrejório.^[18][20]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. igreja
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. igreja
4. ^ a b 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. igreja
5. ^ 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. igreja
6. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. ἐκκλησία
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. ecclesia
8. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. ecclesia
9. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. igreja
10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. ecclesia
11. ^ a b c d Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 271
12. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. igreja
13. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. igreja
14. ^ Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 128
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. igreja
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. igreja
17. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. igreja
18. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. igreja
19. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 5067
20. ^ 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. igreja
21. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. igreja