tenda

Forms

tenda f (plural tendas)^[1] Houaiss records the spellings teda and teemda in the 15th century, and letters of 1537 write temda.^[2][3] Feijó (1734) insists on tenda and tendeiro, not tindeiro.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin tenda (“tent”), a word of the Latin of late antiquity and the Middle Ages, from tendō (“to stretch”): a tent is cloth stretched out.^[5][6][7][1] Houaiss calls the origin disputed.^[2] He explains the word as a shortening of Medieval Latin tendita “stretched (cloth), tent”, standing for tenta, the feminine of the past participle; others take it straight from the participle or set up a Vulgar Latin form with the meaning “tent”.^[2] Wiktionary takes the Late Latin word from Vulgar Latin *tendita.^[1] Niermeyer records both Medieval Latin forms in the senses “tent” and “market stall”.^[8] Nascentes reports older views: A. Coelho derived the word from the Portuguese verb tender, Diez saw in it a noun formed on the Latin verb, and another author preferred tegenda (“that must be covered”).^[7]

The same word is Galician tenda, Spanish tienda, Catalan tenda, Occitan tenda, Italian tenda and Romanian tindă (“porch, entrance hall”).^[9][2] The French word tente was borrowed from the Old Occitan word.^[10]

The Latin verb is from a *ten- (“to stretch”), extended with /d/, and is related to Ancient Greek τείνω (teínō) and Sanskrit तनोति (tanóti).^[1][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Latin charters of Portugal mention tendas early: one of 1115 has tendas de rex, the king's tendas, and a law of 1179 lets the people of Santarém keep tendas freely.^[12] In Galician-Portuguese the word appears in the cantigas of Alfonso X: a satirical cantiga mocks the man who carried the banner sen tenda, “without a tent”, and in the Cantigas de Santa Maria a man has his tent pitched by a spring (fez ferir ssa tenda cabo da fonte).^[12] Machado's date for the word is 1262.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The tents of war and of the nobles are frequent in medieval texts: the Crónica Troiana finds a man seated in a tent of very fine cloth, and a cantiga looks for a man nas tendas dos infanções, “in the tents of the nobles”.^[12][13] The Medieval Latin sense “market stall” led to “shop”, perhaps through the stalls of the fairs.^[8][7] Bluteau still separates a tenda, covered outside with cloth or boards like the stalls of the women who sold food at the Ribeira, from a loja with its counter inside.^[14] Morais (1789) puts the shop selling food first and the field tent second.^[15]

The shop sense lives on in the tendeiro, the grocer or pedlar, whose box of wares and the wares themselves are also called tenda in Portugal.^[2][16] In Brazil and the Azores a tenda is a craftsman's workshop, of a smith, a carpenter or a shoemaker, and in Brazil also a centre for spiritist or Umbanda sessions.^[2][17] In Portuguese India it was the oilcloth cover of a machila, a palanquin, recorded from 1866.^[18] The word passed into Malay tenda and Indonesian tenda.^[1]

Timeline

• 1115 – tendas de rex in a Latin charter.^[12]
• 1179 – tendas in a Latin law granted to Santarém.^[12]
• 1262 – Machado's date for the Portuguese word.^[12]
• 13th century – tenda “tent” in the cantigas of Alfonso X.^[5][2][12]
• 13th century – first record of tendeiro.^[19]
• 14th century – tendilhões, plural of tendilhão “small tent”.^[20]
• c. 1430 – tenda in the Horto do Esposo.^[21]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau distinguishes tenda from loja.^[14]
• 1866 – tenda for the cover of a palanquin in Portuguese India.^[18]
• 1899 – Houaiss dates the sense “workshop where a trade was practised”.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A tent of canvas or another fabric, used by soldiers, campers and nomads: Montámos a tenda junto ao rio.^[2][22][1]
2. A market or fair stall.^[17][23]
3. A small shop selling groceries; any shop.^[2][16][1]
4. (Portugal) The glass-topped box in which a pedlar carries his wares; the wares themselves.^[2][16]
5. (Brazil, Azores) A craftsman's workshop, such as a smithy.^[2][16]
6. (Brazil) The place where the sugar pans stand in a sugar mill.^[2][23]
7. (Brazil, religion) A centre where spiritist or umbanda sessions are held.^[2]
8. (medicine) tenda de oxigênio, an oxygen tent.^[2][24]
9. (anatomy) A fold of the dura mater between the brain and the cerebellum.^[16]

Word family

• tendeiro
• tendilhão

Related words

• tender
• Latin tendō
• Spanish tienda
• Galician tenda

Usage notes

Arder a tenda “the tent burns” is said figuratively of a plan or venture that fails.^[2] In Trás-os-Montes, as in Galician, tenda is the ordinary word for a shop.^[1][25]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. tenda
3. ^ 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. tenda
4. ^ Feijó, João de Morais Madureira (1734), Orthographia, ou Arte de escrever, e pronunciar com acerto a lingua portugueza, Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. tenda
5. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. tenda
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. tenda
7. ^ 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. s.v. tenda
8. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. tenta
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8639
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. tente
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. tendō
12. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. tenda
13. ^ 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. tenda
14. ^ a b Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. tenda
15. ^ 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, 451
16. ^ a b c d e Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. tenda
17. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. tenda
18. ^ a b Dalgado, Sebastião Rodolfo (1919–1921), Glossário luso-asiático, 2 vols., Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, p. 2, 366
19. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. tendeiro
20. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. tendilhão
21. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. tenda
22. ^ 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. tenda
23. ^ a b 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. tenda
24. ^ 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. tenda
25. ^ Estraviz, Isaac Alonso, Dicionário Estraviz, https://estraviz.org, p. s.v. tenda