asno

Forms

asno m (plural asnos, feminine asna, feminine plural asnas)^[1] The Fuero de Madrid (1158–1202) still has the full form asino;^[2] asno appears in documents from 1170.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish asno, inherited from Latin asinus (“ass, donkey”); the feminine asna continues asina.^[3][4][5][1]

The same Latin word is Portuguese asno, Galician asno, Catalan ase, Occitan ase, French âne, Italian asino and Sardinian àinu.^[6][1][7]

The Latin word has no Indo-European etymology: de Vaan takes the intervocalic /s/, which was not turned into /r/, as a sign of a recent loanword, and notes that most Indo-European words for the ass are borrowed.^[8] Wiktionary dates the borrowing after the 4th century BC, and with Gómez de Silva looks for the source in a language of Asia Minor.^[1][9] Gómez de Silva sees the same source behind Ancient Greek ὄνος (ónos), but de Vaan rejects a common preform of the Greek and Latin words.^[9][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to 1076.^[3][4] The sense was the beast of burden from the start; in Alfonso X's Lapidario a stone is to bear the power of omne cauallero en un asno “a man riding on an ass”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias (1611) praises the animal as domestic, useful and cheap to keep, troublesome only when it brays.^[11] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1726) calls it very dull but long-suffering, names jumento, borrico, pollino and burro as other words for it, and records the proverbs Asno con oro alcánzalo todo, that a fool with money gets anything, and Asno de Arcadia, lleno de oro y come paja, said of the rich who live like misers.^[12] The Academy's 1770 edition gives the figurative sense, a very dull person.^[13] In the Quijote Sancho calls himself un asno.^[14]

The plural asnas names the timbers that rest on the main beam of a roof.^[5] Corominas compares asnado, a prop for the wall of a mine, with French poutre “beam”, properly “filly”.^[3] Spanish asno was borrowed into Classical Nahuatl as axnoh and into Tagalog and Cebuano as asno.^[1]

Timeline

• 1076 – first record, according to Corominas.^[3][4]
• 1158–1202 – the Fuero de Madrid has asino.^[2]
• 1170 – asno in documents of León and Castile.^[2]
• 1205 – the feminine asna is first recorded.^[3][4]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario mentions a man riding an ass.^[10]
• 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz uses it in the Libro de buen amor.^[15]
• 1513 – first records from the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[16]
• 1599 – desasnar “to rid of rudeness” is first recorded.^[4]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the animal at length.^[11]
• 1770 – the Academy's dictionary records the figurative sense “dull person”.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. donkey, ass: a long-eared, long-suffering animal used for riding, as a beast of burden and sometimes for drawing loads; the masculine is used for the species.^[5][1]
2. (figurative) A coarse or very dull person; also used as an adjective: No seas asno y escucha lo que te dicen.^[5][1]
3. (feminine plural, asnas) The purlins or timbers that rest on the main beam of a roof.^[5]

Word family

• asna
• asnada
• asnal
• asnería
• asnerizo
• asnero
• asnino
• desasnar

Related words

• asinino
• Portuguese asno
• Catalan ase
• Latin asinus

Usage notes

Asno silvestre is the wild ass of Africa and Asia;^[17] Nebrija gave it as the equivalent of Latin onager.^[5][17] The colloquial asno cargado de letras is a learned person of little wit.^[5] Moliner notes that the feminine asna is not frequent.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. asno
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 379
4. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. asno
5. ^ a b c d e f g 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. asno
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 704
7. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 1, 448
8. ^ 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
9. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 92
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. asno
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. 228
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 433
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1770), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 2nd ed., vol. I: A–B, Madrid: Joachín Ibarra, p. 362
14. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 132
15. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 55
16. ^ 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. asno
17. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 297
18. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. asno