laca

Forms

laca f (plural lacas)^[1] Old forms include alacar (15th century), lacca (1502), lacar (1507), llacas (1508) and laquar (1516).^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Arabic لك (lakk), from Persian لاک (lāk), from Sanskrit लाक्षा (lākṣā).^[2][4][5][1] Corriente, Pereira and Vicente place Prakrit lakkha between the Persian and the Sanskrit forms, and Aurélio and Wiktionary cite Hindi लाख (lākh).^[4][5][1] Nascentes takes the Sanskrit word for its other sense, “a hundred thousand”, from the great number of insects that produce the resin, and thinks that Italian lacca may also have played a part.^[6][7]

The resin was a known article of trade in Europe before the Portuguese reached India, and Spanish laca is recorded from the 13th century.^[8] Houaiss, after Dalgado, treats lacre as a divergent form of the same word, and notes that the two tend to split the meanings between them.^[2][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss finds alacar in a 15th-century text of Cunha's medieval index.^[2] The form laca appears in 1500, in the account of Pedro Álvares Cabral's voyage, among Indian goods: “sandalwood, lac, nutmeg and mace”.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th century the word named the resin itself, an Indian article of trade: in 1516 Duarte Barbosa writes that some say laquar is the gum of a tree and others that it grows on the thin branches of trees.^[3] Morais in 1813 lists it as a dye.^[10] Dalgado explains that the dye boiled out of the raw resin was laca in the narrow sense, while the resin was usually called lacre.^[3]

The modern senses are a chemical lake pigment, the lac of the scale insect, the black or red varnish of China and Japan, a work coated with it, and in Portugal a hair spray.^[2][11][1] From Portuguese the word passed into English as lac, and the English word lacquer came from it through French.^[1]

Timeline

• 15th century – first record, spelt alacar.^[2]
• 1500 – laca in the account of Cabral's voyage.^[3]
• 1502 – lacca in Tomé Lopes's account of his voyage.^[3]
• 1516 – Duarte Barbosa writes laquar.^[3]
• 1813 – Morais lists laca as a dye.^[10]
• 1882 – first record of laquear “to lacquer”.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. (chemistry) A lake, a pigment made by fixing an organic dye on a mineral base; goma-laca.^[2][5]
2. lac, the resin produced by certain scale insects (cochonilha) on trees of tropical Asia, sold in flakes or powder.^[2][13]
3. lacquer: the black or red varnish of China and Japan; charão.^[2][11]
4. A work or object coated with lacquer: uma coleção de lacas japonesas.^[2][13]
5. (Portugal) hairspray; laquê.^[2][5][1]

Word family

• goma-laca
• laquear

Related words

• lacre
• laquê
• Spanish laca
• Italian lacca
• French laque

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. laca
3. ^ a b c d e f g Dalgado, Sebastião Rodolfo (1919–1921), Glossário luso-asiático, 2 vols., Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, p. 1, 501
4. ^ a b Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. laca
5. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. laca
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. laca
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 287
8. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 546
9. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. lacre
10. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 198
11. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 5532
12. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. laquear
13. ^ 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. laca