saia

Forms

saia f (plural saias)^[1] Old forms are saya and ssaya; the 15th century also has saiaa.^[2][3] Saya was the usual spelling down to Bluteau (1712–1728).^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *sagia, written Old Galician-Portuguese saya in the oldest texts.^[3][1][6][7] Houaiss gives the form as Medieval Latin sagia “skirt, tunic”, the neuter plural, taken as a feminine, of sagium (“a kind of cloth”).^[2] Either way it is derived from Latin sagum (“coarse woollen cloak, soldier's cloak”).^[2][3] The DLP starts directly from saga, the neuter plural of the Latin word.^[8] Medieval Latin charters write the word also as saia and saya.^[9][10]

Meyer-Lübke instead took the Portuguese word from French saie, which would explain why the -g- was lost;^[11][10] Nascentes follows him.^[11][10] The same Latin word is Galician saia, Spanish saya and Catalan saia.^[1][12] The doublet saio “old long coat” is from the Latin word itself.^[11][3]

The Latin word is said to be of Gaulish origin.^[13][14] Wiktionary gives Gaulish *sagos or Ancient Greek σάγος (ságos, “cloak”) as the source, but Beekes takes the Greek word from Latin.^[1][15]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are in the 13th-century satirical cantigas: Afonso X mocks men “who wear laced saias”, and Martin Soarez has a woman seen en saia, “in her undergarments”.^[16][3] The medieval saia was a full-length garment worn by women and men alike, over which a mantle could be put.^[17]

Semantic evolution

The garment was long a man's too: Morais (1789) records saia de malha, a coat of iron rings worn as armour, and Vieira and Aulete call saia an old garment of men at war.^[18][19][20] Morais already defines it as the woman's garment from the waist down, the sense of today.^[18] By figure it came to mean “a woman” (vive agarrado às saias).^[2][7] Other senses are a cloth hanging round a table, an extra sail added to lateen sails in fair weather, and in north-eastern Brazil the tail of cattle.^[20][19][21]

The word passed into Kabuverdianu as saia and into Tetum as saia.^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records, as saya, in the cantigas d'escarnho.^[3][16]
• c. 1430 – saia in the Horto do Esposo.^[22]
• 15th century – first record of the doublet saio.^[3]
• 1538 – saya in a private letter.^[5]
• 1789 – Morais defines it as a woman's garment and records saia de malha.^[18]
• 1813 – first records of saieta and saiote.^[3]
• 1871–1874 – Vieira records the nautical sense.^[19]

Meanings

Noun

1. A skirt: a woman's garment hanging from the waist, of a length that varies with fashion; also the part of a dress below the waist.^[2][8][1]
2. (informal) A woman; women: Ele anda sempre atrás de um rabo de saia.^[2][23]
3. A petticoat; a cloth hanging from a table to the floor.^[2][8]
4. (nautical) A supplementary sail added to the foot of a lateen sail.^[8][24]
5. (historical) A long garment worn by men, especially at war.^[7][20]
6. (north-eastern Brazil) The tail of cattle.^[21]

Word family

• saiote
• saieta

Related words

• saio
• Latin sagum
• Galician saia
• Spanish saya

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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. saia
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. saia
4. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. saia
5. ^ a b CLUL (ed.) (2014), P.S. Post Scriptum: Arquivo Digital de Escrita Quotidiana em Portugal e Espanha na Época Moderna, Lisboa: Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, http://ps.clul.ul.pt, p. s.v. saia
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. saia
7. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. saia
8. ^ a b c d 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. saia
9. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. sagum
10. ^ a b c Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 454
11. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7515
12. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 180
13. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. sagum
14. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. sagum
15. ^ 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. σάγος
16. ^ a b 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. saia
17. ^ 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. saia
18. ^ a b c 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, 367
19. ^ a b c 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, 378
20. ^ a b c 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. saia
21. ^ a b Navarro, Fred (2004), Dicionário do Nordeste, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, p. s.v. saia
22. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. saia
23. ^ Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. saia
24. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. saia