ave

Forms

ave f (plural aves)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish ave, inherited from Latin avis (“bird”).^[2][3][4][1] The Glosas Silenses gloss the plural as Latin volatilias, which suggests to Corominas that the word was not equally popular everywhere, at least in the east.^[2]

Portuguese ave and Galician ave are the same word;^[5] Old Catalan, Old Aragonese and Old Navarrese had Catalan au, and the Fuero de Teruel has auf.^[5][2] Corominas notes that Spanish, Portuguese and Sardinian are the only Romance languages to have kept the Latin noun;^[6] Catalan ocell and French oiseau continue the diminutive Vulgar Latin *aucellus.^[2][6]

The Latin noun goes back to Proto-Italic *awis and Proto-Indo-European *h₂éwis; its cognates include Ancient Greek αἰετός (aietós, “eagle”) and Sanskrit वि (ví, “bird”).^[7][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) has it in the sense of birds of omen: leaving the river Salón the Cid ovo buenas aves “had good birds”, a good augury.^[8][2] The Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200) has las aves del cielo “the birds of the sky”.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The word is very common in medieval texts, from the Cid and Berceo to Juan Ruiz.^[2] Alfonso X's book on hawking classes birds of prey, the aves aranniegas caught in nets and the mudantes that moult.^[9] Autoridades (1726) notes that ave usually took the article el to avoid the clash of vowels, and that it also meant a hen or chicken: se comieron dos aves asadas.^[10] In Chile it still means poultry.^[1]

Since the Middle Ages ave has become the general and scientific word for the class, while the everyday word for a small bird is pájaro.^[11][4] Phrases include ave de rapiña “bird of prey”, ave de paso “bird of passage” and the plant name ave del paraíso.^[4][12]

Timeline

• 10th century – the Glosas Silenses gloss aves.^[2]
• c. 1140 – buenas aves in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[8][3]
• c. 1200 – las aves del cielo in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar.^[8]
• 1250–1300 – Alfonso X's Libro de la montería names the kinds of hawks.^[9]
• 1526 – first record in the Americas, in Honduras.^[13]
• 1605 – the derivative avechucho.^[3]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Latin avis.^[14]
• 1726 – Autoridades notes the masculine article and the sense “hen”.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bird: a warm-blooded, egg-laying vertebrate with a horny beak, a body covered in feathers, two legs and two wings, usually able to fly; in the plural, the class Aves.^[4][1]
2. (Chile) poultry, fowl.^[1]

Word family

• avecilla
• avechucho
• avefría
• avestruz
• aviar

Related words

• aviario
• aviación
• avión
• pájaro
• Latin avis
• Portuguese ave

Usage notes

Ave is feminine but takes el and un in the singular because it begins with a stressed /a/: el ave, las aves.^[10][4] The DLE has two other words spelled the same: ave from the Latin greeting avē “hail”, which survives in the interjection ave María, used to express surprise or as a greeting on entering a house; and AVE (masculine), the Spanish high-speed train, from the trade name, an acronym of Alta Velocidad Española.^[4][1][15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 417
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ave
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. ave
5. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. avis
6. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. ave
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. ave
9. ^ 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. ave
10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1
11. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. ave
12. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. ave
13. ^ 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. ave
14. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 243
15. ^ 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. ave