azar

Forms

azar m (plural azares)^[1] The 13th-century Repartimiento de Murcia spells it açar.^[2] DEMel also records asar.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Andalusian Arabic الزهر (azzáhr, “die”), from Arabic زهر (zahr), a word that in Classical Arabic means “flower” and in the spoken language came to mean “die” (the dice cube).^[4][5][6][7] Corominas suggests that the word first named one face of the die, perhaps the face painted with a flower.^[4][5] Corriente, Pereira and Vicente explain that the knucklebones were marked with flowers or figures to tell their sides apart.^[4][5][8] The vowel /a/ kept unchanged and the lack of a vowel between /h/ and /r/ show that the word passed into Romance very early.^[4]

The same Arabic word gave Portuguese azar, Catalan atzar, Old Occitan azar, French hasard and Italian zara (“game of dice”); from French come English hazard and Italian azzardo.^[4][8] The flower sense of the Arabic word is behind azahar.^[4][5]

Covarrubias records the opinions of his time: a French origin, a Persian word for “misfortune” after Diego de Urrea, and a Hebrew root.^[9] Autoridades derives it from an Arabic word for “a thing lacking”.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is the Libro de Alexandre (c. 1230–1250), where a line has cuemo quien juega l'azar “like one who plays at dice”.^[4][3] Alfonso X's Libro del ajedrez (1283) uses it for a game of dice and for the throw that loses: es llamado azar.^[11][12][5]

Semantic evolution

Corominas orders the senses so: the losing face of the die (Nebrija), the losing throw (1283 and Juan Ruiz), a dice game (Alexandre, Alfonso X, Juan del Encina, Cervantes), bad luck, misfortune or risk (the common sense in the classical period, from the mid-16th century) and chance, accident (common from the 17th century).^[4][5] Juan Ruiz has viene un mal azar “a bad throw comes”.^[11] Nebrija glosses it as one point on the die, Latin canis.^[13][14]

Covarrubias defines it as “hindrance, mishap, bad luck”, and Autoridades as an unforeseen event that spoils the expected success.^[9][10] The sense “chance” was rare in the Golden Age, and Baralt thought it a Gallicism.^[4] Corominas answers that the Academy's historical dictionary has an example in Lope de Vega.^[4] Today the main senses are chance and unforeseen misfortune, with the old gaming senses and the set phrase al azar “at random”.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1230–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre has the word for a game of dice.^[4][3]
• 1250 – the earliest Old Spanish text in the HSMS archive with the word.^[15]
• 1283 – Alfonso X's Libro del ajedrez uses it for the losing throw.^[5][12]
• 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor has mal azar.^[16][11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: a point on the die, Latin canis.^[13]
• mid-16th century – the sense “bad luck, misfortune, risk”.^[5]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as hindrance and bad luck.^[9]
• 1618 – first record of azaroso.^[5][4]
• early 17th century – the sense “chance, accident”.^[5]
• 1726 – Autoridades.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. chance, a fortuitous event: lo encontré por puro azar.^[6][1]
2. An unforeseen misfortune.^[6][1]
3. In games of cards or dice, the card or die whose point loses.^[6][1]
4. In billiards, each of the two sides of a pocket that face the table.^[6][1]
5. In the ball game, a corner, door, window or other obstacle.^[6]

Word family

• azaroso

Related words

• azahar
• Arabic زهر (zahr)
• French hasard
• English hazard

Usage notes

The phrase al azar means “at random”, and juego de azar is a game of chance.^[6][1] The economic term azar moral renders “moral hazard”.^[6] García de Diego lists a separate azar “orange blossom”, a form of azahar from the Arabic word for “flower”.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. azar
3. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. azar
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 432
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. azar
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. azar
7. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. azar
8. ^ a b 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, p. s.v. atzar
9. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 251
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, 514
11. ^ a b c Alonso Pedraz, Martín (1986), Diccionario medieval español: desde las Glosas Emilianenses y Silenses (s. X) hasta el siglo XV, 2 vols., Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, p. 473
12. ^ 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. azar
13. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 299
14. ^ 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. azar
15. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. azar
16. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 66
17. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 7363