rupia

Forms

rupia f (plural rupias)^[1] Houaiss records the plural spellings rupiâs (1708), rupiàs (1718) and rupiás (1746), with the stress on the last syllable, and Dalgado gives rupiá as an old masculine form.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Hindi रुपीया (rupīyā), a variant of रुपया (rupyā).^[1][2][4] The Hindi word is from Sanskrit रूप्य (rūpya, “silver; silver coin”).^[2][3][5][1] Corriente, Pereira and Vicente allow that it may have come through Persian instead.^[6][7] Etymonline suggests that the Sanskrit word first meant something stamped with an image, a coin.^[8]

Corriente argues that Spanish rupia and Catalan rupia came through Portuguese, and Wiktionary gives the Portuguese word as the source of French roupie.^[7][1] The English word rupee is recorded from the 1610s.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Dalgado's earliest quotations are from Fernão Guerreiro's Relaçam annual, the second of them dated 1607: the Mogul ruler promises to collect 2,000 Rupias, "which are certain coins", and orders 50 Rupias a month for the Christians.^[3] Houaiss dates the word to 1608 from the same work.^[2] Dalgado notes that the coin did not circulate in southern India at the time of the conquest, so the first chroniclers do not mention it; it was the currency of the Mogul empire.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In the 17th and 18th centuries the word is used masculine as well as feminine, quinhentos rupias in 1663 and dous Rupias in 1718, and Morais (1789) still enters it as masculine: a silver coin of Surat worth 500 réis.^[3][9] The first rupees were minted in Goa in 1726 and in Diu later, and Dalgado describes the coin of Portuguese India, of 16 tangas, beside the British Indian rupee.^[3] The DLP records the rupia as the unit of currency of the former Portuguese territories in India, divided into a hundred avos.^[5] Today the word names the currency of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Maldives, Mauritius and the Seychelles.^[2][10]

Timeline

• 1607 – Rupias in Fernão Guerreiro's Relaçam annual.^[3]
• 1608 – Houaiss's first date, from the same work.^[2]
• 1610s – the English word rupee.^[8]
• 1663 – quinhentos rupias in Manuel Godinho's Relação.^[3]
• 1726 – the first rupees are minted in Goa.^[3]
• 1789 – Morais enters rupia as a silver coin of Surat.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. The rupee, the unit of currency of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and other countries; a coin or note of this value.^[2][10][1]
2. (historical) The silver coin of Portuguese India.^[11][10][5]

Usage notes

A separate medical term rupia, first recorded in Vieira's dictionary (1874), names a skin eruption with thick conical crusts, a sign of tertiary syphilis.^[2][12][13] It has a separate source: New Latin rupia, from Ancient Greek ῥύπος (rhúpos, “dirt, filth”).^[2][12][14] Corominas says the term was coined in English by Bateman in 1815.^[15] Vieira also records rupia as a genus of water plants, which Aurélio spells rúppia.^[13][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. rupia
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Dalgado, Sebastião Rodolfo (1919–1921), Glossário luso-asiático, 2 vols., Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, p. 2, 266
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. rupia
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. rupia
6. ^ Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. rupia
7. ^ a b Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. 428
8. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com, p. s.v. rupee
9. ^ 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, 361
10. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 8205
11. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. rupia
12. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. rupia
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, 355
14. ^ 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. ῥύπος
15. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. rupia
16. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. rupia