aradura

1

In Portugal, the amount of land that can be kept in cultivation, year by year, by a yoke of oxen. From arado, a plow. In more recent dictionaries, it is defined as the amount of land that can be conveniently plowed by a team of oxen in one day. Lacking documentary evidence other than dictionaries, we cannot say whether the earlier definition was in error, the meaning has changed, or the later definition is in error.

sources

Aradura, sf. ploughing, tilling; the quantity of land which a yoke of oxen can plough in a year.

Alfred Elwes.
A Dictionary of the Portuguese Language in Two Parts. Fifth Edition.
London: Crosby Lockwood and Son, 1907.
Page 36.

2

In Spain, the amount of land that can ploughed in 1 day by a team of oxen. The word appears with this meaning in dictionaries at least as early as 1832, subsequently echoed in later productions. Seoane (1854) adds the qualification that the word is provincial, which is repeated by Velasquez (1872). It is not included in the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy.

M. Seoane.
A Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages, … Eleventh edition.
London: Longman, Brown and Co., etc., 1854.

Mariano Velasquez de la Cadena.
A Pronouncing Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages.
New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1872.

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