massa

Forms

massa f (plural massas)^[1] Houaiss records the spelling masa in the 15th century.^[2] Bluteau (1712–1728) heads the word maça and refers massa to it, while Morais (1813) insists that the dough is to be written massa and not maça.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin massa (“lump, mass; dough”), written Old Galician-Portuguese massa in the oldest texts.^[2][5][1] The same Latin word is Galician masa, Spanish masa, Catalan massa, French masse and Italian massa.^[6][7][1]

Latin took the word early from Ancient Greek μᾶζα (mâza, “barley cake”), perhaps through Etruscan;^[1][8] Old Latin rendered the Greek ⟨ζ⟩ as /ss/, and the old form was never replaced by a later spelling with ⟨z⟩.^[1][8] The Greek word meant a barley cake and later a lump or mass, especially of metal; the Latin one meant dough and then any lump or ingot.^[9][10] The Greek noun is formed from μάσσω (mássō, “to knead”), from Proto-Indo-European *meh₂ǵ- (“to knead”).^[1][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Cantigas de Santa Maria (13th century) massa is the dough kept for making bread, a massa que tiinna pera pan fazer, which is given to the poor, so the first record has the sense “dough”.^[11] The Portuguese version of the Fuero Real speaks of silver or gold received en massa “in bulk, unminted”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

From the lump of dough or metal the word spread to any shapeless body of matter and to the bulk or whole of something: Morais (1813) quotes a massa do exercito and a massa das rendas “the whole of the revenues”.^[4] Silva Bastos (1912) adds the people, a crowd, and the sum withheld from soldiers' pay.^[12] Houaiss gives the physical sense, the quantity of matter in a body, and the plural massas for the common people.^[2]

In Brazil massa is the grated cassava pressed in the tipiti before it is roasted into flour, a sense recorded by Beaurepaire-Rohan in 1889.^[13][2] Brazilian informal speech uses it for money, and in Bahia for marijuana.^[2][14] As an adjective it means “very good, great” in Bahia and Minas Gerais and, in the north-east, “attractive” of a person.^[2][14]

Timeline

• 13th century – massa “dough” in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[11][5]
• c. 1430 – the Horto do Esposo uses the word.^[15]
• 15th century – the spelling masa.^[2]
• 1611 – Barbosa's dictionary lists Massa.^[16]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau refers massa to the spelling maça.^[3]
• 1813 – Morais defends the spelling massa and records the sense “the whole”.^[4]
• 1889 – Beaurepaire-Rohan records the Brazilian sense “grated cassava”.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A mass or lump of solid or pasty matter, usually of no definite shape.^[2][17]
2. dough: flour mixed with water or another liquid; batter.^[2][18][1]
3. pasta, and a dish made with it.^[2][1]
4. mortar of lime or cement, sand and water; argamassa.^[2][19]
5. The bulk, the whole or the greater part of something.^[2][17]
6. A crowd;^[2][18] (often plural) the common people, the masses.^[2][18]
7. (physics) Mass, the quantity of matter in a body.^[2][1]
8. (Brazil) Grated cassava pressed in the tipiti before it is made into flour.^[2]
9. (Brazil, informal) money.^[2][1]

Adjective

1. (Brazil, informal) Very good, great, cool.^[2][1][14]

Word family

• amassar
• amassador
• amassadouro

Related words

• Latin massa
• Spanish masa

Usage notes

Em massa means “all together, in bulk”.^[12][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o 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 r Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. massa
3. ^ 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. massa
4. ^ a b c Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 274
5. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. massa
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5396
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. massa
8. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. massa
9. ^ 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
10. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. masse
11. ^ 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. massa
12. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. massa
13. ^ a b Beaurepaire-Rohan, Henrique de (1889), Diccionario de vocabulos brazileiros, Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, p. s.v. massa
14. ^ a b c Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. massa
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. massa
16. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. massa
17. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. massa
18. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. massa
19. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 5991