almuerzo

Forms

almuerzo m (plural almuerzos)^[1] Old and dialect forms include almuerço, armuerzo (14th–15th centuries), amuerzo, almorzo and Cuban amueso.^[2] Almozo, without the r, appears once in Juan Ruiz and in Judeo-Spanish;^[3] Corominas puts it down to Old Portuguese mosso “bite”.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *admordium (“breakfast”), as Corominas holds after Meyer-Lübke, from admordeō (“to bite into, begin to eat”), from ad- and mordeō (“to bite”).^[3][4][5][1] The change of am- to alm- is frequent in Castilian and Portuguese.^[3] Gómez de Silva attributes the initial syllable to the many Arabic words that begin with the article.^[6]

García de Diego preferred *emordium, from emordere.^[7] Corominas finds his evidence weak.^[3] Meyer-Lübke also proposed a dialect form *armordium, which Corominas considers possible but unlikely.^[3] The DLE derives the word from the Arabic article and Latin morsus (“a bite”), as Covarrubias already had.^[8][9]

The same word is Portuguese almoço, Old Portuguese almorço, and Galician almorzo “breakfast”.^[3][10] Catalan esmorzar and Sardinian izmurzare are Castilian loans.^[3] Old Spanish pronounced the z voiced, as the medieval spellings show.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A fuero of Quintanilla de Onsoña (Palencia) of 1242 lays down that those working on the lord's land get almuerzo of bread and wine, and at midday bread, wine and food: the word is the morning meal.^[2][11] Corominas's first record is Alfonso X's chronicle, about 1295, where Álvar Fáñez mocks a count: más son palabras de almuerzo que de fidalgo “those are words of breakfast, not of a nobleman”.^[3][12]

Semantic evolution

For centuries almuerzo was breakfast, a light meal taken on rising: Nebrija (c. 1495) gives almuerzo de mañana, Latin ientaculum, and Percyvall (1591) translates “breakfast”.^[3][13][14] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1726) calls it the first food of the morning, also called desayuno.^[15] In the 19th century the word also named a breakfast set of cups and pots.^[16][17]

In towns the word moved to the midday meal, as Latin prandium had done; many villages keep the old sense.^[3] The DLE now puts the midday or early-afternoon meal first and the morning meal second.^[8] In Asturias almuerzu is the first substantial meal of the day.^[18] In Peru and Bolivia it is also the soup served at midday.^[19]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the verb almorzar is already in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[3][4]
• 1242 – a fuero of Quintanilla de Onsoña grants farm workers almuerzo.^[2][11]
• c. 1295 – Alfonso X's chronicle, Corominas's first record.^[3][4]
• 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz personifies don Almuerzo in the Libro de buen amor.^[20]
• 1438 – the Corbacho writes armuerzos.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: almuerzo de mañana, Latin ientaculum.^[13]
• 1573 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico City.^[21]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from the Arabic article and Latin morsus.^[9]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as the morning meal.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. lunch: the meal taken at midday or in the early afternoon: Nos vemos después del almuerzo.^[8][1]
2. A meal taken in the morning; a mid-morning snack or, in villages, breakfast (desayuno).^[8][22]
3. The act of having lunch.^[8]
4. (Bolivia, Peru) The broth or first course of the main meal.^[8][19]

Word family

• almorzar

Related words

• morder
• desayuno
• Portuguese almoço

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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. almuerzo
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 204
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. almuerzo
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 182
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 55
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2427
8. ^ 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. almuerzo
9. ^ 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. 151
10. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 190
11. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. almuerzo
12. ^ 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. almuerzo
13. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 291
14. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 62
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 237
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 38
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 59
18. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. almuerzu
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. almuerzo
20. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 29
21. ^ 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. almuerzo
22. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. almuerzo