letra

Forms

letra f (plural letras)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote letra and letera (plural leteras); 15th-century texts also have letarras, leterras and the Latinising littera.^[2][3] Wiktionary lists the old spellings lêtra and lettra.^[1] Vieira enters letra only as a cross-reference to lettra.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin littera (“letter of the alphabet”), by the popular route, written Old Galician-Portuguese letra and Old Galician-Portuguese letera in the oldest texts.^[2][3][5][1] Nascentes quotes the plural Old Galician-Portuguese leteras from the ⟨Visão de Túndalo⟩, in a phrase meaning “letters of gold”.^[6]

The same Latin word is Galician letra, Spanish letra, Catalan lletra, Occitan letra, French lettre and Italian lettera.^[7][1] The Romance languages also use the singular for “a letter, missive”, a sense that Latin had only in the plural.^[7]

The origin of the Latin word is unclear: Lewis & Short connect it with linō (“to smear”), and the OLD does so tentatively, but de Vaan finds the reconstruction behind that link morphologically unconvincing.^[8][9][10] Wiktionary also reports the view that it came through Etruscan from Ancient Greek διφθέρα (diphthéra, “prepared hide, leather”).^[1][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantigas de Santa Maria of the 13th century use the word in most of its later senses: one cantiga praises “the five letters that are in her name” (das çinque leteras que á no seu nome), others speak of a hand of writing that one could hardly tell apart, of leteras meaning a written message, and of a story told “as the written source says” (segund’a letra diz).^[3] Houaiss dates the word to the 13th century.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Barbosa's dictionary of 1611 already has letras de cambio “bills of exchange”; in Spanish this commercial sense, recorded from 1547, was modelled on Italian.^[12][13] Houaiss traces the phrases letra de forma “block letter” and letra de soma to French lettre de forme and lettre de somme.^[2] Morais in 1789 lists the words of a song (letra as “lyrics”), letra redonda as a printing type, and the plural for learning, as in a man de muitas letras.^[14]

In the plural the word came to mean literature and the humanities, as in a university course of Letras.^[2][15] Brazilian football clipped chute de letra to letra for a kick with the leg crossed behind the other, the rabona.^[2][1]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, as letra and leteras.^[2][3]
• 15th century – the spellings letarras and leterras.^[2]
• 1480–1510 – the Vida de Santo Agostinho uses the word.^[16]
• 1541 – letra in a private letter.^[17]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses it with Latin litera.^[18]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists letras de cambio.^[12]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau counts twenty-three letters in the Portuguese alphabet and derives the word from Latin lego and iter.^[19]
• 1789 – Morais records letra for the words of a song.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A letter of the alphabet, one of the written signs for the sounds of a language.^[2][20][1]
2. handwriting; a person's way of writing: A letra do médico é difícil de ler.^[2][1]
3. (printing) A piece of type;^[1] (informal) a typeface or font.^[2][1]
4. What is written; the literal wording of a text, as opposed to its spirit.^[2][15]
5. (music) The lyrics of a song or hymn.^[2][1]
6. (commerce) A bill of exchange, letra de câmbio.^[21][22]
7. (in the plural) Learning; literature and the humanities.^[2][15]
8. (in the plural, archaic) A letter, epistle.^[2][15]
9. (Brazil, football) A rabona, short for chute de letra.^[2][1]

Word family

• letreiro
• letrista
• letrado

Related words

• beletrismo
• literal
• literário
• literatura
• literato
• Latin littera
• Spanish letra

Usage notes

Fixed phrases include ao pé da letra “literally, to the letter” and letra morta “a dead letter”, something never carried out or no longer in force.^[23] Bluteau's derivation of letra from Latin lego “I read” and iter “road”, because letters open the road to the reader, is a learned fancy of its time.^[19]

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 m n o p Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. letra
3. ^ a b c d 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. letra
4. ^ 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, 1291
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. letra
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 296
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5087
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. littera
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. littera
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. littera
11. ^ 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. διφθέρα
12. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. letra
13. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. letra
14. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1789), Diccionario da lingua portugueza composto pelo padre D. Rafael Bluteau, reformado, e accrescentado, 2 vols., Lisboa: Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, p. 2, 16
15. ^ a b c d Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 5653
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. letra
17. ^ CLUL (ed.) (2014), P.S. Post Scriptum: Arquivo Digital de Escrita Quotidiana em Portugal e Espanha na Época Moderna, Lisboa: Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, http://ps.clul.ul.pt, p. s.v. letra
18. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. letra
19. ^ 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. letra
20. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. letra
21. ^ 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. letra
22. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. letra
23. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. letra