adobe

Forms

adobe m (plural adobes)^[1] Old Spanish wrote adove and adoue beside adobe;^[2][3] Nebrija and Palencia have -b-.^[2][3] Aragon (adova, already in 1403) and Murcia (atoba) use forms that match the Catalan one.^[3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Andalusian Arabic اَلطُّوب (aṭṭúb, “bricks”),^[4][5] from Arabic طوب (ṭūb, “bricks”), a collective noun.^[4][6] Corriente and his co-authors start from the Andalusian Arabic unit noun “a brick”, from طوبة (ṭūbah).^[7] The Arabic word comes from Egyptian ḏbt (“brick, block”), through Coptic ⲧⲱⲃⲉ (tōbe, “brick”).^[4][1][8] The initial /a/ is the Arabic article, with its /l/ assimilated to the following consonant.^[8]

Corominas notes that the derivative adobera is recorded as early as 1062, before the noun itself.^[3] The same Arabic word gave Portuguese adobe, Catalan tova (in Valencia and the south of Catalonia) and Aragonese adoba.^[3][1] The Catalan and Murcian forms with initial /t/ come from the Arabic unit noun.^[3][6] Corominas rejects Neuvonen's view that the Portuguese word was taken from Castilian and that the Castilian word came from the east of Spain.^[3] Machado holds that the initial vowel of the Portuguese form is prosthetic rather than the article, because a doubled /t/ would not have been softened.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to 1157, and the TDHLE quotes a fuero of Pozuelo de Campos of that year, with a question mark, in which a man must close his door cum adoves, “with adobes”.^[3][6][2] The Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy) tells how Pharaoh made the Hebrews make adoves without straw.^[10] The sense is the same as today's: an unfired brick of mud and straw.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The meaning has hardly changed since the Middle Ages: Alfonso X's General Estoria and Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor (1330–1335) use it for mud bricks, and Guadalajara's ordinances of 1379–1384 require the mud to be well kneaded with plenty of straw.^[2][11] Nebrija (c. 1495) renders it Latin later crudus, “raw brick”.^[2][12] Covarrubias in 1611 explained the name from adobar, because the earth is first “seasoned”, an opinion of his own; the Diccionario de Autoridades (1726) defined it as a brick of raw earth dried only in the sun.^[13][14]

In the Americas the word is recorded from 1520 in Darién and 1535 in Mexico, and the chroniclers used it for the houses of the Pueblo peoples.^[15][16] In Argentina an adobe may also be fired.^[17] Figurative senses include “a very big foot” in Argentina and Uruguay, and in Costa Rica the clod of earth left on the roots of a plant dug up for transplanting.^[18][19] In León it is also a large hard clod turned up by the plough, and a mild insult for a dull person.^[20]

English took the word from Spanish in American English in 1739.^[21] Etymonline also reports the view that it comes from the verb adobar, which the Spanish sources do not follow.^[21][3]

Timeline

• 1062 – the derivative adovera.^[3]
• 1157 – adoves in a fuero of Pozuelo de Campos.^[2][3]
• c. 1200 – adoves in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (13th-century copy).^[10]
• 1272–1275 – adoues in Alfonso X's General Estoria.^[11]
• 1403 – the Aragonese form adova.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: adobe de barro o de tierra, Latin later crudus.^[12]
• 1520 – the first record from the Americas, in Darién.^[15]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from adobar.^[13]
• 1739 – first record in English.^[21]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives an Arabic etymology.^[22]

Meanings

Noun

1. adobe: a block of mud, sometimes mixed with straw, shaped like a brick and dried in the air, used to build walls: Levantaron la casa con adobes y tejas.^[4][1]
2. (Argentina, Uruguay; figurative, colloquial) A very big foot.^[18]
3. (Costa Rica) The clod of earth that stays on the roots of a plant taken up for transplanting.^[19]

Word family

• adobera
• adobería

Related words

• atoba
• ladrillo
• tapia
• Catalan tova

Usage notes

The Mexican phrase descansar haciendo adobes, “to rest by making adobes”, is said of someone who spends the time meant for rest doing other work.^[4][18][23]

Old Spanish also had adobe “fetters, irons put on a prisoner's feet”, which Corominas treats as a separate word, perhaps from Arabic ضبة (dábba, “bolt, iron bar”), the source of aldaba; he finds it in Castilian only in the Gran Conquista de Ultramar (c. 1300), with several Portuguese examples of the 15th–17th centuries, and notes that the change of sense is not well explained.^[3][24] The DLE keeps this sense as an obsolete second meaning of the brick word, and the Academy's 2001 edition explained it by the heavy brick to which the fetters were often attached.^[4][25]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. adobe
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 57
4. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. adobe
5. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. adobe
6. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. adobe
7. ^ Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter
8. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. adobe
9. ^ Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. 109
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. adobe
11. ^ 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. adobe
12. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 285
13. ^ 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. 1, 68
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 89
15. ^ a b 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. adobe
16. ^ Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter
17. ^ Garzón, Tobías (1910), Diccionario argentino, Barcelona: Imprenta Elzeviriana de Borrás y Mestres
18. ^ a b c Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 69
19. ^ 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. adobe
20. ^ 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
21. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
22. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 22
23. ^ García Icazbalceta, Joaquín (1899), Vocabulario de mexicanismos comprobado con ejemplos y comparado con los de otros países hispano-americanos, México: La Europea
24. ^ Eguílaz y Yanguas, Leopoldo de (1886), Glosario etimológico de las palabras españolas (castellanas, catalanas, gallegas, mallorquinas, portuguesas, valencianas y bascongadas) de origen oriental, Granada: La Lealtad
25. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. adobe