leira

Meaning

field; a strip of cultivable land

Gender

♀️ Feminine

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈlejɾa̝/

Etymology

Cognate of Portuguese leira and of Asturian lleira (“strip of land”). From Old Galician-Portuguese leira, documented in local Medieval Latin as larea and laria since the 9th century. From a pre-Roman substrate of Iberia, from Proto-Celtic *ɸlāryā, a derivative from Proto-Celtic *ɸlārom (“floor”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂ros (“flat”), from *pleh₂- (“to be flat”). Cognate of Welsh llawr (“floor”), of English floor, and of Luxembourgish Flouer (“farmland”).
Josep Coromines discarded other proposed etymons:
* Latin glārea (“gravel”), the etymon of Spanish glera (“land with gravel or sand”) and of Asturian llera (“idem”), because of the improbable semantic evolution implied;
* Agglutination of the article + ārea: unlikely in the Galician-Portuguese linguistic area, where the article lost the lateral consonant.

Sentences

Nunha leira do dito lugar o arado levantou restos de enterramentos.

In a field of the said place the plow raised remnants of burials.