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segunda-feira

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Etymology and origin of the Portuguese word segunda-feira

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
1300s spelt seguda feyra More words from the 14th century
Inherited from
Latin secunda feria
Ultimate origin
Ecclesiastical Latin secunda fēria

Pronunciation

  • Brazil: /seˌɡũ.dɐˈfe(j).ɾɐ/, [seˌɡũ.dɐˈfe(ɪ̯).ɾɐ][1]
  • Portugal: /sɨˌɡũ.dɐˈfɐj.ɾɐ/, [sɨˌɣũ.dɐˈfɐj.ɾɐ][1]
  • Northern, Portugal: /sɨˌɡũ.dɐˈfej.ɾɐ/, [sɨˌɣũ.dɐˈfej.ɾɐ][1]
  • Central, Portugal: /sɨˌɡũ.dɐˈfej.ɾɐ/, [sɨˌɣũ.dɐˈfej.ɾɐ][1]

Forms

segunda-feira f (plural segundas-feiras)[1] The oldest record, of the 14th century, is spelt seguda feyra;[2] segunda-feira and ssegunda-feira follow in the 15th.[2] The day is often called simply segunda.[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Ecclesiastical Latin secunda fēria (“second weekday”), written Old Galician-Portuguese seguda feyra in its oldest record.[1][2] Nascentes, Aurélio and Aulete analyse it as the feminine of segundo with feira.[4][3][5]

Cunha explains that in the early Middle Ages, under the influence of the Church, the days of the week other than Saturday and Sunday were named in Latin by ordinals, Monday being followed by tertia fēria, quarta fēria, quīnta fēria and sexta fēria, and that Portuguese is the only Romance language that adopted these names, which are recorded from its beginnings.[6] Nascentes finds the usage already in the Peregrinatio.[7] Medieval Latin feria meant a weekday in this sense.[8] In liturgical Latin the word meant a feast day, a day of rest; since merchants sold their goods at the religious festivals, the word came to mean a market, and the numbered phrases came to name the weekdays once the sense of rest was forgotten.[6] The ordinal secundus (“second”) is from sequor (“to follow”).[1]

Medieval texts, almost all of them Galician, also have the older name Old Galician-Portuguese lũes, from Vulgar Latin dies lunis, an alteration of diēs lūnae (“day of the Moon”) after the other day names.[9][1] The same compound is Galician segunda feira and Mirandese segunda-feira.[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The 14th-century record that Houaiss cites, spelt seguda feyra, already names the second day of the week.[2] The older name appears in a cantiga of Pero Mendiz da Fonseca, e do lũes ao martes / ffoy comendador “and was commander from Monday to Tuesday”.[9][10]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept the single sense “Monday”, the second day of a week counted from Sunday.[2][11] The DLP records it also for the Monday of Carnival week.[11] It passed into Tetum, in loron-segunda.[1]

Timeline

  • 14th century – first record, spelt seguda feyra.[2]
  • 14th century – the older name lũes in the Galician Crónica Geral and a cantiga;[9] luns in a Galician document of 1384.[9]
  • 15th century – the spellings segunda-feira and ssegunda-feira.[2]
  • 1544 – the word in a private letter.[12]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Monday, the second day of the week counted from Sunday, between domingo and terça-feira.[2][11][3][1]

Usage notes

Portuguese counts Sunday as the first day of the week, so that Monday is the “second”.[2][11] The plural is segundas-feiras.[3] The usual abbreviation is seg..[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. segunda-feira
  3. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. segunda-feira
  4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. segunda-feira
  5. ^ 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. segunda-feira
  6. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. feira
  7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 212
  8. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. feria
  9. ^ 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. lũes
  10. ^ 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. lũes
  11. ^ 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. segunda-feira
  12. ^ 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. segunda-feira

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Segunda-feira.” Etymologically, 15 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/pt/segunda-feira. Accessed 16 Nov. 2026.

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