cos

Forms

cos m (plural cossos)^[1] Old Catalan wrote cors, the usual spelling of the 13th and most of the 14th century;^[2] cos was already the spoken form by then.^[3] The old plural cosses became cossos.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Catalan cors, the form of the medieval texts, which is inherited from Latin corpus (“body”).^{[3][4][5][6][1]}

The same Latin word is Old Occitan cors, French corps, Spanish cuerpo, Italian corpo and Portuguese corpo.^[7][1][8]

The Latin word goes back to *korpos and to *ḱrp-os- (“body”).^[9] Wiktionary compares the Germanic neuter *hrefaz (“body, torso”), whence hrif (“belly”).^[1]

Coromines takes the ⟨r⟩ of the old spelling as artificial by the 15th century: in the sermons of Vincent Ferrer the scribes still write ⟨cors⟩ but let slip the plural ⟨cossos⟩, and Jaume Roig rhymes the word with ⟨fos⟩.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Homilies d'Organyà, of about 1200, already use cors for the human body as opposed to the soul: as the body dies without earthly bread, the soul dies without the bread of heaven.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

Besides the body, medieval texts used the word for the main part of a ship or building, and in the phrase en cos for someone wearing only the garment close to the body.^[10] Llull speaks of cossos celestials, the heavenly bodies.^[11] From the sense “person” the old language made a grammatical use: lo rei son cos meant “the king himself”, frequent in Llull and Muntaner, as Old French said lui son cors; old people in Mallorca still used it in Coromines's time.^[3]

In popular and church usage cos came to mean a corpse: a document of 1380 has funeral cloths for adult corsos and for infants, and ser cos meant “to be dead”.^[3] The DCVB records a funeral service and the corpse of a person over twelve or fourteen years among its senses.^[4] Gual Camarena records cos also for a woman's bodice, a word that fell out of use before the middle of the 16th century.^[12]

Labèrnia's dictionary of 1839 gives any material substance first, then the trunk of the body, a corpse, a body of people and a body of soldiers.^[13] The derivatives are mostly modern: corporeitat 1803, cossar “to give body to” in Narcís Oller.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – the Homilies d'Organyà write cors.^[3][5]
• 13th century – cors in Jaume I, Llull and the other writers of the period.^[3]
• 1275–1299 – cos in royal documents of the CICA corpus.^[14]
• 1330 – cos in a document, one of the first records of the spoken form.^[3]
• 1380 – a document uses corsos for corpses.^[3]
• 1460 – Jaume Roig rhymes cos in the Spill.^[3]
• 1839 – Labèrnia's dictionary defines cos.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. body, the whole of the material parts of a human being or animal.^[15][6][1]
2. A person; in some phrases, the person as the seat of feelings or spirits.^[15][6]
3. A dead body, a corpse.^[15][1]
4. The trunk, without the head and limbs; the part of a garment that covers it.^[15][4]
5. The central or main part of something, such as a building, a letter or a bone.^[15][10]
6. (printing) The height of a type size.^[15]

Word family

• anticòs
• cossar
• cossat
• bencossat
• cossatge
• cosset

Related words

• corpus
• corporal
• Old Occitan cors
• Spanish cuerpo

Usage notes

Two other words are spelled cos.^[16][6] Cos “eye of a needle”, first recorded in Jaume Roig's Spill (c. 1460), comes from an older caus, from Latin capsus “box, cavity”, and is the same word as Occitan cas and French chas.^[16] Cos “racecourse; race held at a festival” is a reduction of the old cors “course”.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 6, 75
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 2, 981
4. ^ a b c Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. cos
5. ^ a b c d Bruguera, Jordi (1996), Diccionari etimològic, Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, p. 245
6. ^ a b c d e Enciclopèdia Catalana, Gran diccionari de la llengua catalana (GDLC), Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana; online edition, https://www.diccionari.cat, p. s.v. cos
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2253
8. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 276
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Faraudo de Saint-Germain, Lluís, Vocabulari de la llengua catalana medieval, online edition, Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, p. s.v. cos
11. ^ Nou glossari general lul·lià (NGGL), Centre de Documentació Ramon Llull, Universitat de Barcelona, https://nggl.ub.edu, p. s.v. cos
12. ^ Gual Camarena, Miguel, Vocabulario del comercio medieval, online edition, Universidad de Murcia, https://www.um.es/lexico-comercio-medieval, p. s.v. cos
13. ^ a b Labèrnia, Pere (1839–1840), Diccionari de la llengua catalana ab la correspondencia castellana y llatina, 2 vols., Barcelona, p. s.v. cos
14. ^ Torruella, Joan; Pérez Saldanya, Manuel; Martines, Josep (dirs.), Corpus Informatitzat del Català Antic (CICA), https://www.cica.cat, p. s.v. cos
15. ^ a b c d e f Institut d'Estudis Catalans (2007), Diccionari de la llengua catalana, 2nd ed. (DIEC2), Barcelona: Edicions 62; online edition with later updates, https://dlc.iec.cat, p. s.v. cos
16. ^ a b Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 2, 983