tela

Forms

tela f (plural telas, diminutive telinha, augmentative telona or telão m)^[1] Houaiss records telas and teas in the 15th century and tellas in 1572.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin tēla (“cloth on the loom; web”), a learned word.^[3][4][1] Houaiss and Cunha give the Latin word without calling it learned, and Houaiss contrasts it with its inherited doublet teia.^[2][5][1] The REW instead takes the Portuguese word from Spanish tela.^[6]

The inherited forms of the Latin word in the west are Galician tea and Old Galician-Portuguese tea.^[2][7] Elsewhere it gives Catalan tela, Italian tela, French toile and Romanian teară.^[6][8]

The Latin noun comes from *texla, from texō (“to weave”).^[9][2][8] Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Italic *tekslā.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the word to the 13th century.^[2][5] In the Cantigas de Santa Maria (no. 385), on a man struck on the head by a stone, both tela sedada and the inherited tea assedada occur.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Cardoso's Latin–Portuguese dictionary (1562) still explains Latin tela by the vernacular tea “web” or tear “loom”.^[11] Morais (1789) defines tela as a web or a fabric of silk, silver or gold, citing Camões, and adds a snare for partridges and the lists of jousts and tournaments; since trials by combat were fought there, tela de juízo came to mean a lawsuit.^[12] Vieira (1873) records the phrase pôr as telas a “to set something going”.^[13]

The painter's canvas and, by metonymy, the painting itself are dated by Cunha and Houaiss to 1881.^[5][2] Later senses are the cinema screen and the cinema itself, and in Brazil the screen of a television or computer, where Portugal says ecrã.^[2][4][1]

Timeline

• 13th century – first records.^[2][5]
• 13th century – tela sedada and tea assedada in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[10]
• 1562 – Cardoso explains Latin tela by tea and tear.^[11]
• 1572 – the spelling tellas.^[2]
• 1789 – Morais records fabric of silk and gold, the partridge snare and the lists of tournaments.^[12]
• 1881 – first record of the sense “painting”.^[5][2]
• 1975 – Aurélio records the cinema screen and the cinema.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A fabric woven of threads of wool, silk, linen, gold and so on; a web (teia).^[2][15]
2. A garment, dress.^[2][16]
3. (anatomy) A thin membrane.^[2][1]
4. (papermaking) The endless band of fine wire mesh in a paper machine.^[2]
5. (Brazil) A mesh of wire or nylon for fences and windows.^[2][17]
6. (painting) A canvas stretched on a frame for painting.^[2][1]
7. A painting: vendeu uma tela antiga.^[2][1][17]
8. (printing) The matrix used in screen printing.^[2]
9. (cinema, photography) The screen on which films or slides are projected.^[2][1]
10. The cinema, the art of film.^[2][1]
11. (Brazil) The screen of a television, computer or other electronic device.^[2][1]
12. (figurative) The focus of attention; the subject under discussion.^[2][4]
13. (historical) The lists of jousts and tournaments.^[2]
14. (Portugal) The description of a scene or landscape in a literary work.^[2][18]

Word family

• telar
• telão
• telinha
• telona

Related words

• telado
• teia
• Latin tēla
• Galician tea
• Spanish tela

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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 u v w x Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. tela
3. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. tela
4. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. tela
5. ^ a b c d e Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. tela
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. tela
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. tela
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. toile
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ 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. tela
11. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1562), Dictionarium juventuti studiosae admodum frugiferum, Coimbra: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. tela
12. ^ 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, 448
13. ^ 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, 687
14. ^ Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda (1975), Novo dicionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, p. 1385
15. ^ 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. tela
16. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. tela
17. ^ a b 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. tela
18. ^ 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. tela