antorcha

Forms

antorcha f (plural antorchas)^[1] Old Spanish texts of the 13th century have entorcha, and Alfonso X's General Estoria also entuerco; the spelling antorcha appears in a will of 1302.^[2][3] Enrique de Villena wrote entorjas in his translation of the Aeneid (1427–1428), and Covarrubias still listed entorcha beside antorcha in 1611.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is probably borrowed from Old Occitan entorcha, a word that arose from a crossing of entorta (“torch”) with Old French torche (“torch”).^[3][6][1] The Academy gives the Occitan source as only possible, and Moliner with a question mark.^[7][8] The Occitan noun, also antorta, continues Latin intorta (“twisted”), the feminine past participle of intorqueō (“to twist”).^[3][6] The French word goes back to Vulgar Latin *torca, a reduced form of torquēs (“twisted collar, necklace”), whose variant torqua is already found in Varro.^[3][9][1] Corominas notes that Vulgar Latin reduced the noun in this way at the same time as it changed the verb torqueō into *torcere, the source of torcer.^[3] Gómez de Silva and Bénaben explain the name by the twisted straw or rope, soaked in wax or resin, of which torches were made.^[10][11]

Old Occitan has many examples of the word throughout the 14th century, the first in 1332, also in the forms entorca and antorcha, and the French word is found about 1220 in Robert de Clari, in the Picard form torke.^[3][6] Corominas takes the Occitan forms with /k/ to be native, and those with /tʃ/ to come from French, since they occur where Occitan keeps /k/ before ⟨a⟩.^[3] In Catalan there is Old Catalan entorxa in the 14th century, antorxa in the second half of the 15th and torxa about 1450.^[3]

The prefix led Corominas to ask whether the word could have been formed in Castile from a verb, since entorchar and entorchado exist only in Spanish.^[3] He rejects the idea, because the stressed vowel would be hard to explain and all the evidence points to France.^[3] The old native word for a torch was hacha.^[3] The 19th-century Academy had derived the word from Medieval Latin antorca, itself from the Latin participle.^[12][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DEMel finds the form entorchas in the Semejança del mundo (1223–1300) and in Alfonso X's General Estoria (c. 1275), where it means a large torch or taper.^[2] The first antorcha that Corominas knew is in the will of Alonso Martínez de Olivera, made at Palencia in 1302, which may have been modernised in the printed copy:^[3][6] Iten mando que prediquen a mi enterramiento y ardan cien antorchas a la misa y en todas mis novenas “Item, I order that there be preaching at my burial and that a hundred torches burn at the mass and at all my novenas”.^[14] Corominas defines this early antorcha as a wax taper made of three or four candles joined and twisted together.^[3]

Semantic evolution

After 1302 the word is not recorded again until the 15th century, in Santillana, Alfonso de Palencia and Nebrija.^[3] The CDH has it from the end of the 14th century in Aragonese texts, among them Fernández de Heredia's translation of Orosius, which already uses it figuratively: de la antorcha de Mario fue encendido el fuego “from the torch of Marius the fire was lit”.^[4] Nebrija gave it as a synonym of hacha de cera, Latin funale, and in 1535 Juan de Valdés said he preferred antorcha to hacha.^[15][14]

Covarrubias (1611) and the Autoridades (1726) separated the two: the antorcha is made of several candles twisted together, while the hacha is straight and even.^[16][17] The Autoridades also used the word for a bright, burning exhalation in the sky.^[17] The Academy noted in 1770 that it belonged to oratory and poetry, where it could mean any light, and by 1817 that it was used only there.^[18][19] Domínguez (1846) recorded the figurative sense of a guiding light, applied to religion, reason or knowledge, which was common in the Americas from the 17th century (antorchas de la Iglesia, Venezuela 1758).^[20][21] Today the word names a torch of resinous wood or other fuel held in the hand, and figuratively whatever guides the mind.^[7][8]

Timeline

• c. 1275 – the form entorchas in Alfonso X's General Estoria.^[2]
• 1302 – antorcha in a will made at Palencia.^[3][14]
• 1332 – first record of Old Occitan entorcha.^[6]
• 1376–1396 – Fernández de Heredia uses the word figuratively in his Orosius.^[4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: antorcha o hacha de cera, Latin funale.^[15][22]
• 1527 – the derived antorchado in the Ordinances of Seville;^[16] entorchado follows in the 17th century.^[3][6]
• 1611 – Covarrubias explains the name by the twisted candles.^[16]
• 1650 – first record from the Americas, in Michoacán.^[21]
• 1770 – the Academy marks the word as belonging to oratory and poetry.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. A torch: a piece of resinous wood, a bundle of esparto wicks or a similar object soaked in tar or another fuel, which burns at one end and is held by the other: Bajaron a la cueva con dos antorchas.^[7][8][1]
2. A large wax candle or taper, an hacha.^[7][17]
3. (literary, figurative) Something that guides the mind or conduct: la antorcha de la fe.^[7][8]

Word family

• antorchero
• entorchar
• entorchado

Related words

• hacha
• torcer
• French torche
• Latin torqueō

Usage notes

The older dictionaries distinguish antorcha, a taper of several twisted candles, from hacha, a single straight one;^[16] Terreros (1787) noted that common usage no longer kept the distinction.^[16][17][23]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. antorcha
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 280
4. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. antorcha
5. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 748
6. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. antorcha
7. ^ a b c d e 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. antorcha
8. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. antorcha
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. torche
10. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 71
11. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. antorcha
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 72
13. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 137
14. ^ a b c 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. antorcha
15. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 294
16. ^ a b c d e Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 186
17. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 313
18. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1770), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 2nd ed., vol. I: A–B, Madrid: Joachín Ibarra, p. 259
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 69
20. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 139
21. ^ 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. antorcha
22. ^ 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. antorcha
23. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 1, 118