oração

Forms

oração f (plural orações)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote oraçon.^[2][3] Houaiss records oraçõ, oracom and orrações from the 14th century and oração, oraçooes and oratiom from the 15th.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin ōrātiō (“speech; prayer”), written Old Galician-Portuguese oraçon in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1] Nascentes calls it a semi-learned word.^[4] The Latin noun is formed from ōrō (“to speak; to pray”) with the suffix -tiō; it meant speech, language and eloquence, and in Christian Latin came to mean prayer.^[5][1][6] Medieval Latin used it for prayer and for the prayers of the Mass.^[7]

The same Latin word is Galician oración, French oraison and Romanian urăciune.^[1] The French word was borrowed from Latin with a French ending around 1050, and Wiktionary notes that the other Romance forms are learned too.^[6][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantigas de Santa Maria use oraçon for prayer, often in the phrase fazer oraçon “to pray”: sempr' en ssa oraçon / a ela s'acomendava “always in her prayer she commended herself to her”.^[8] The phrase also appears in a cantiga of Pero da Ponte in the Cancioneiro da Ajuda.^[8][9]

Semantic evolution

Cardoso (1569) glosses the word with Latin oratio and precatio, speech and prayer, and Barbosa (1611) treats it mainly as a formal speech, with phrases such as compor oração “to compose a speech”.^[10][11] Morais (1813) lists the speech first, then prayer, and the grammatical sense “sentence with a complete meaning”.^[12] In the grammar of today oração is a clause, a unit with a verb, and compounds name its kinds: oração coordenada, oração subordinada, oração absoluta.^[2][1] Other set phrases are oração dominical, the Lord's Prayer, and oração de sapiência, the speech that opens a university year.^[2]

In Rio Grande do Sul the word also names a prayer used to heal the sick with charms and blessings.^[13] The word passed into Konkani.^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century – oraçon in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Cancioneiro da Ajuda.^[8][2]
• 14th century – the spellings oraçõ and oracom.^[2][3]
• 15th century – the modern spelling oração.^[2]
• 1513 – the Livro dos Mártires uses the word.^[14]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses it with oratio and precatio.^[10]
• 1813 – Morais records the grammatical sense.^[12]
• 1881 – first record of oracional “of a clause”.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A prayer: a request or words addressed to God, a saint or a deity; prece, reza: Antes de dormir, a criança diz a sua oração.^[2][15][1]
2. (liturgy) The raising of the heart or soul to God; contemplation.^[2][16]
3. A religious or moral address given from the pulpit; a sermon (sermão).^[2][15]
4. A formal speech given on a solemn occasion; an oration.^[2][17]
5. (grammar) A clause: a sentence or part of a sentence containing a verb.^[2][1]

Related words

• oracional
• oraçoeiro
• orador
• orar
• oratória
• oratório
• oráculo
• Latin ōrātiō
• French oraison

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. oração
3. ^ a b c d e Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. oração
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. oração
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. ōrātiō
6. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. oraison
7. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. oratio
8. ^ 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. oraçon
9. ^ 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. oraçon
10. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. oração
11. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. oração
12. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 368
13. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. oração
14. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. oração
15. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. oração
16. ^ 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. oração
17. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 6716