árbol

Forms

árbol m (plural árboles)^[1] Old Spanish has arbor beside arbol, and also aruol, aluores and albores.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish arbor, later arbol, inherited from Latin arbor (“tree”).^[4][1][5][3] The final /r/ became /l/ by dissimilation from the first /r/, a change also seen in cárcel.^[6][7]

The same Latin word is Portuguese árvore, Catalan arbre, French arbre, Italian albero and Romanian arbure.^[8][3] The Latin noun was feminine; only Logudorese and Portuguese kept that gender, and in Spanish it became masculine like other nouns in -or such as dolor and error.^[8][6] In Italian, Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese the word also means “mast”, as it already did in Latin.^[8]

De Vaan connects it with arduus (“high, steep”) and reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *h₃rdʰ-ōs (“height, uprightness”), which would have come to mean “upright tree”.^[9] He points out the drawback: the other languages with this root only have an adjective “high”, so the Latin noun would be a very archaic formation.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to 1197, in the form arbor.^[4] Alfonso X's General estoria (1272–1275) tells how God made every tree in paradise, and in its middle the tree of life: „et en medio del parayso crio ell aruol dela uida”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias (1611) defined the tree as a plant that grows tall and forms a heart, and noted that the masts of ships and the figure of a family tree are also called árboles.^[11] The Diccionario de Autoridades added the watchmaker's awl, the body of a shirt without sleeves, and the cant sense “body” recorded by Juan Hidalgo.^[12] The Academy later added the newel of a spiral staircase and the upright shaft on which machines such as oil mills and waterwheels turn.^[13] The technical senses multiplied: the iron piece of the printing press, the rod that works the stops of an organ, the height of printing type, and any shaft that carries rotating parts.^[5][14]

The figure of the family tree grew into the sense of any branching diagram, such as a syntactic or evolutionary tree, and the tree of graph theory.^[1][15] In Chile árbol was a coat stand.^[16] In Chile a Christmas tree is árbol de Pascua.^[17] In Leonese it also names the wooden axle of a mill.^[18] Basque borrowed the word as arbola.^[1]

Timeline

• 1197 – first record, in the form arbor.^[4]
• c. 1230–1260 – Berceo uses arbol.^[19]
• c. 1260 – the Fuero Juzgo speaks of trees cut down.^[20]
• 1272–1275 – the General estoria names the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.^[10]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin arbor and arbos for the plant, and malus for the mast.^[21]
• 1515 – the first records from the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[22]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the senses “mast” and “family tree”.^[11]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades adds the watchmaker's awl, the body of a shirt and the cant sense “body”.^[12]
• 1899 – the Academy defines it as a perennial plant with a woody trunk that branches above the ground.^[23]

Meanings

Noun

1. A tree: a perennial plant with a tall woody trunk that branches at some height above the ground: Plantaron dos árboles delante de la escuela.^[5][14][1]
2. (nautical) A mast of a ship.^[5][14][1]
3. A branching diagram that shows descent, hierarchy or possible choices, as in árbol genealógico “family tree”.^[1][5]
4. (mechanics) A fixed or rotating shaft that supports rotating parts or transmits power.^[5][14]
5. (architecture) The newel of a spiral staircase.^[5][14]
6. (printing) The iron piece at the top of the spindle of a hand press; the height of a type from its foot to the shoulder.^[5][14]
7. (music) In an organ, the shaft that brings a stop into play.^[5][14]
8. The body of a shirt, without the sleeves.^[5][14]
9. A watchmaker's awl with a wooden handle and a steel point.^[5][12]

Word family

• arbolado
• arboladura
• arbolar
• arboleda
• arbolillo
• arbolito
• enarbolar

Related words

• arbóreo
• arborescente
• arborizar
• arbusto
• Latin arbor
• Portuguese árvore

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. árbol
3. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 660
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. árbol
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. árbol
6. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. árbol
7. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. árbol
8. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 604
9. ^ a b 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 Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. árbol
11. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 202
12. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 373
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 65
14. ^ a b c d e f g h Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. árbol
15. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. árbol
16. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 158
17. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. árbol
18. ^ Le Men Loyer, Janick (2002–2012), Léxico del leonés actual, 4 vols., León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro; electronic version, Universidad de León, p. s.v. árbol
19. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 46
20. ^ Alonso Pedraz, Martín (1986), Diccionario medieval español: desde las Glosas Emilianenses y Silenses (s. X) hasta el siglo XV, 2 vols., Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, p. 365
21. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 295
22. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. árbol
23. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 84