lista

Forms

lista f (plural listas)^[1]

Etymology

Houaiss takes it as borrowed from Italian lista, which meant “a long narrow strip of paper or cloth” from about 1300–1313 and “a sheet listing names” from 1327.^[2][3] Wiktionary gives the same chain, through Old Galician-Portuguese lista.^[1] Cunha and the DLP derive it from French liste, and Nascentes and Aurélio take the Germanic word through French.^[4][5][6][7] The DHLF dates the French word in the sense “list” only to about 1567, as a borrowing from Italian, and notes that the older French word, recorded in 1150, meant “border”.^[8] Michaelis and Silva Bastos derive the Portuguese word straight from Germanic, and Corominas does so for Spanish lista, first recorded in the second half of the 14th century.^[9][10][11]

The Germanic word is Proto-Germanic *līstōn (“edge, border”), which also gave Old High German līsta, Old English līste and Old Norse lista, and survives in German Leiste and English list “strip, border”.^[12][2] Wiktionary considers its further origin uncertain, possibly Proto-Indo-European *leys- (“to trace, track”).^[1]

The variant listra, with an /r/ added after the -st-, is recorded from about 1560 and has kept the senses “stripe, streak”.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the word to the 14th century.^[2][4] Lorenzo's chronology antedates Machado's 16th-century record with the Crónica Troiana, where a lady puts on a fine robe of a cloth called diaspe “with stripes of gold worked in it” (con listas de ouro metido).^[14] The first sense is thus “strip, stripe”, not “list”.^[14]

Semantic evolution

The sense “written series of names” is in Pereira (1697), who glosses lista with Latin album and catalogus.^[15] Bluteau (1712–1728) defines it as the names of people who are to do something, written in order, and explains Latin album as the white board on which the Romans wrote such lists.^[16] Feijó (1734) distinguishes lista, the paper with names, from listra.^[17] Morais (1813) adds the wake of a ship, and Vieira (1871–1874) the lista civil, the sum a nation votes for the royal household.^[18][19]

In modern Portuguese “list” is the main sense; in Brazil lista is also the usual word for a stripe in cloth, and it can mean a menu, a ballot paper or the list of lottery prizes.^[2][20][21]

Timeline

• 14th century – first record of lista.^[2][4]
• Crónica Troiana – listas de ouro “stripes of gold” in a cloth.^[14]
• c. 1560 – first record of the variant listra.^[13]
• 1697 – Pereira glosses lista as album and catalogus.^[15]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau defines the list of names.^[16]
• 1813 – Morais records the wake of a ship.^[18]
• 1836 – first record of alistamento.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A list: a written series of names of people or things: a lista dos convidados.^[2][7][1]
2. A long narrow strip of cloth or paper.^[2][5]
3. (chiefly Brazil) A stripe of a different colour in cloth or on a surface; listra: uma camisa às listas.^[2][20]
4. The wake of a boat.^[7][5]
5. A menu; a list of the dishes and prices of a meal.^[21][22]
6. A ballot paper with the names of the candidates.^[21][9]

Word family

• alistar
• alistamento
• listagem
• listar

Related words

• listra
• Spanish lista
• French liste

Usage notes

Lista negra is a blacklist of people or firms held to be suspect, and lista civil the allowance voted for a head of state.^[9][21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. lista
3. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli, p. s.v. lista
4. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. lista
5. ^ a b c 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. lista
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. lista
7. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. lista
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. liste
9. ^ a b c 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. lista
10. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. lista
11. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 669
12. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 248
13. ^ a b Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. listra
14. ^ a b c 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. lista
15. ^ 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. lista
16. ^ 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. lista
17. ^ 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. lista
18. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 230
19. ^ 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, 1325
20. ^ a b Aulete, Francisco Júlio Caldas, Dicionário contemporâneo da língua portuguesa (1st ed. 1881), online as Aulete Digital, Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, https://aulete.com.br, p. s.v. lista
21. ^ a b c d Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. lista
22. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 5724