ria

Forms

ria f (plural rias)^[1]

Etymology

Houaiss takes it borrowed from Spanish ría (“arm of a river, river mouth”), which he dates to 1495 and explains as formed from río (“river”) with the feminine ending -a.^[2] The Aulete Digital also gives a Spanish source.^[3] The Spanish dictionary of the Academy derives its own word from the Spanish word for “river”.^[4] Most Portuguese dictionaries derive ria instead within Portuguese, from Portuguese rio: so Nascentes, Silva Bastos, Aurélio, Michaelis, the DLP and the Porto dictionary.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10]} Wiktionary gives both views, an alteration of the Portuguese word or a borrowing from Spanish.^[1] The Portuguese record of 1416 is older than the Spanish date Houaiss gives.^[2][11]

Portuguese rio goes back through Vulgar Latin *rius to Latin rivus (“brook, stream”).^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lorenzo's chronology quotes a text of 1416 with na Ria que ha dauante a dicta çidade “in the ria that lies before the said city”, and the Crónica de D. Fernando has meteromsse em çertas rias que hi ha “they went into certain rias that are there”.^[11] The word already named an inlet of water by the coast.^[11][2]

Semantic evolution

Vieira (1871–1874) defines the word as the mouth by which a river flows into the sea.^[13] The original Caldas Aulete adds a small, navigable branch of a river and, in the plural, a deeply indented coast with shallow sea.^[3] Houaiss keeps both senses, a navigable channel or arm of the sea and, in the plural, a coast of this kind, as in the rias of Galicia.^[2] The modern dictionaries of Portugal describe the ria in the terms of geography, as a long, narrow inlet where the sea has flooded river valleys.^[9][10] Nascentes notes that the name is peculiar to the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula, at Aveiro and Vigo.^[5] Aurélio marks the word as used in Portugal.^[7]

Timeline

• 1416 – first record, na Ria que ha dauante a dicta çidade.^[11][2]
• 1495 – Houaiss's date for Spanish ría.^[2]
• 1513 – first occurrence in the CTA corpus, in the Livro dos Mártires.^[14]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira defines it as the mouth of a river.^[13]
• 1912 – Silva Bastos derives it from rio.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. (geography) A ria: a long, narrow inlet of the sea formed where it has flooded a river valley: a ria de Aveiro.^[10][9][1]
2. A navigable channel or arm of the sea or of a river; a small branch by which a river runs into the sea.^[2][3][8]
3. (in the plural) A deeply indented coast where the sea is shallow.^[2][3][8]
4. (Portugal) A set of seawater channels along certain coasts, into which small streams of fresh water may run.^[7]

Related words

• rio
• riacho
• Spanish ría

Usage notes

The same spelling is also a form of the verb rir “to laugh” (the imperfect ria “I/he laughed”).^[15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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. ria
3. ^ a b c d 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. ria
4. ^ Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. ría
5. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. ria
6. ^ a b Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. ria
7. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. ria
8. ^ 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. ria
9. ^ 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. ria
10. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 8114
11. ^ 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. ria
12. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. rio
13. ^ a b Vieira, Frei Domingos (1871–1874), Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da lingua portugueza, 5 vols., Porto: Ernesto Chardron e Bartholomeu H. de Moraes, p. 5, 294
14. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. ria
15. ^ Wikcionário (Portuguese Wiktionary), pt.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. ria