úlcera

Forms

úlcera f (plural úlceras)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin ulcera, the plural of the Latin word for “sore, ulcer”, a neuter plural taken in Spanish as a feminine singular.^{[2][3][4][1][5][6]} Corominas suggests that the Aragonese bulco (“birthmark, skin blemish”) of the Aragonese valley of Ansó may continue the Latin word by inheritance, though no other Romance language has it.^[2]

The Latin noun goes back to Proto-Italic *elkos, which developed regularly through an intermediate ⟨*olkos⟩ into the Latin form, and to Proto-Indo-European *h₁elḱ-os (“ulcer”).^[7] Its closest cognate is Ancient Greek ἕλκος (hélkos, “wound, ulcer”), and Sanskrit has a word for “haemorrhoids” from the same source.^[7][8][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's short dictionary dates the word 1490.^[3] The earliest records with a text are in Nebrija's dictionaries: the Latin–Spanish one of 1492 glosses hulcus as el botor o ulcera and aphtha as ulcera en la boca de los niños “ulcer in children's mouths”, and the Spanish–Latin one of about 1495 has ulcera de niños en la boca.^[9][2]

Semantic evolution

Autoridades quotes the word from Quevedo, and Corominas notes that by his time it was known to all educated speakers.^[2] Salvá (1846) defined it as a deep sore caused by an acrid, corrosive humour, and the Academy's 1869 edition as a deep sore kept open by an internal cause or a local defect.^[10][11] In 1899 the Academy gave a medical definition and first recorded the sense of damage to the wood of plants.^[12] In El Salvador it is also a colloquial name for an angry, aggressive person.^[13]

Timeline

• 1490 – first record according to Corominas.^[3]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary uses it in several glosses.^[9]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija's Spanish–Latin dictionary enters it.^[2][9]
• 1592 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico City.^[14]
• 1607 – the derivatives ulceroso and ulcerar are recorded.^[3][2]
• 1899 – the Academy first records the sense in botany.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. (medicine) An ulcer: a lesion of the skin or a mucous membrane with loss of tissue, slow to heal and often with pus: Le diagnosticaron una úlcera de duodeno.^{[4][15][6][1]}
2. (botany) Damage to the woody part of a plant, through which corrupt sap oozes.^[4][15]
3. (El Salvador, colloquial) An angry, aggressive person.^[13]

Word family

• ulceroso
• ulcerar
• ulceración
• exulcerar

Related words

• Latin ulcus

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 711
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. úlcera
4. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. úlcera
5. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. úlcera
6. ^ a b Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. úlcera
7. ^ 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, p. ulcus
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. ulcus
9. ^ a b c Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. úlcera
10. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 1085
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 773
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 994
13. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. úlcera
14. ^ 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. úlcera
15. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. úlcera