teia

Forms

teia f (plural teias)^[1] The medieval form is tea, with tela beside it in the 13th century; the spelling teia is recorded from 1789.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin tēla (“cloth on the loom; web”), written Old Galician-Portuguese tea in the oldest texts.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin noun is a contraction of *texla, from texō (“to weave”).^[2][5] De Vaan traces the verb to Proto-Indo-European *teḱs- (“to fashion”).^[6]

The same Latin word is Galician tea, Spanish tela, Catalan tela, French toile and Italian tela.^[7][8] Portuguese also has the learned doublet tela.^[2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Cantigas de Santa Maria people lay sas teas de lenzo “their webs of linen” on a chest, and the women then make shirts from them; another cantiga uses tea for the membrane of the brain.^[9] Houaiss and Cunha date the word to the 13th century.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The first sense was the cloth woven on the loom.^[2][9] From the web the word came to mean any network or structure, the plot of a story and a series of events, and above all the spider's web, teia de aranha.^[2][10] An old sense is the lists of a tournament, as in Rodrigues Lobo's torna à teia; another is the railing or wooden partition that separates the public in churches and courts.^[11][10] Farmers use it for a fluff that grows round bunches of grapes and buds.^[2]

Recent senses include teia alimentar, the food web of ecology, and the World Wide Web.^[2][12] Its derivative tear “loom” is recorded from the 14th century as thear.^[3]

Timeline

• 13th century – tea and tela; the Cantigas de Santa Maria speak of teas de lenzo.^[2][3][9]
• 14th century – first records of teada and of thear, later tear “loom”.^[3]
• c. 1430 – tea in the Horto do Esposo (manuscript of 1390–1437).^[13]
• 1562–1575 – first record of teagem.^[14]
• 1723 – the spelling theya in a letter.^[15]
• 1789 – the spelling teia.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. cloth woven on a loom (tear); the weft.^[2][16][1]
2. A spider's web, teia de aranha: Uma aranha fez teia no canto da janela.^[2][10][1]
3. (figurative) A network, an organised structure: uma teia de contactos.^[2][10][1]
4. (figurative) A series of linked events; the plot of a story.^[2][10][1]
5. (archaic) The lists where knights jousted.^[2][11]
6. A railing or low partition that separates the public in churches, courts and meeting halls.^[2][10]
7. (agriculture) A fluff that forms round bunches of grapes and buds and harms them.^[2][11]

Word family

• tear
• teada
• teagem

Related words

• tecer
• tela
• Galician tea

Usage notes

Teia de Penélope “Penelope's web” is work that is never finished, after the web that Penelope wove by day and undid by night.^[2][10]

A separate teia, now only poetic, means “torch”; it comes from Latin taeda and is the same word as teda.^[2][4][10] The Cantigas de Santa Maria use tea in this sense too, of candles that burn without smoke non come teas “not like torches”.^[9]

Viterbo found teia in a charter of 1176 as a boundary between two estates and was unsure whether it meant a fence or a pine wood.^[17]

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 n o p q r s t Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. teia
3. ^ a b c d e f Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. teia
4. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. teia
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. tēla
6. ^ 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. texō
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. tela
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. toile
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. tea
10. ^ a b c d e f g h Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. teia
11. ^ 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. teia
12. ^ 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. teia
13. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. tea
14. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. teagem
15. ^ 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. teia
16. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. teia
17. ^ Viterbo, Joaquim de Santa Rosa de (1798–1799), Elucidario das palavras, termos e frases que em Portugal antiguamente se usárão, 2 vols., Lisboa: Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, p. 2, 342