ballena

Forms

ballena f (plural ballenas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish ballena, also spelt vallena and uallena, inherited from Latin ballaena (“whale”), a variant of the Latin balaena.^{[2][3][4][1][5]} Corominas notes that most Romance languages continue the commoner form with a single ⟨l⟩, while the form that survived in Castilian and Portuguese was created or favoured by a learned false etymology that tied the whale to the Greek verb βάλλω (bállō, “to throw”), for the water it throws up, an idea that Isidore of Seville echoes in his Etymologies.^[2] He reads the ⟨e⟩ of the second syllable, where the Latin diphthong ⟨ae⟩ did not develop as in popular words, as a sign of semi-learned treatment, but allows that the Latin suffix -enus may also have played a part.^[2]

The same Latin word is Portuguese baleia, Galician balea, Catalan balena, French baleine, Italian balena and Romanian balenă.^[6][1] Old Portuguese has balea in 1274.^[7] Coromines dates the Catalan word to the 14th century and notes that the Castilian form spread into modern Catalan, while the native form survived in popular speech, above all on the coasts.^[8]

The Latin word is from Ancient Greek φάλλαινα (phállaina, “whale”).^[1][9] Beekes points out that the Latin ⟨b⟩ for the Greek ⟨φ⟩ shows that the word reached Latin through a third language, and considers the Greek word Pre-Greek because its ⟨λ⟩ varies between single and double.^[9] De Vaan reports the view that the Greek and Latin words were both taken from a common unknown source, beside Leumann's view of a direct loan from Greek; the Latin ⟨ae⟩ shows that the borrowing was fairly recent.^[10] The older derivation from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to swell”), with a link to φαλλός (phallós, “penis”), is reported by Wiktionary and the DHLF.^[1][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DHLE finds the word first in the middle of the 13th century, in two tellings of the story of Jonah: as vallena in La historia de la donzella Teodor (c. 1250, known from a 16th-century copy), and as ballena in the Castilian Evangelio de San Mateo (before 1260).^[5][12] The gospel reads assi como Ionas fue tres dias e tres noches en el uientre de la ballena “just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale”.^[12] Corominas gives the Siete Partidas of Alfonso X (1256–1263) as the first record.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Medieval texts use the word for the great sea animal, often in the story of Jonah, and the spellings uallena and vallena alternate with ballena until the middle of the 17th century, when ballena prevails;^[5] balena occurs in 1600 and bayena in 1798.^[5] The first dictionary to record it is the Glosario de Toledo, of about 1400.^[5] Covarrubias (1611) calls it the largest fish of the sea and identifies it with the Leviathan of the Hebrews.^[13] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1726) still defines it as a fish of monstrous size, the largest in the sea, mentions those caught on the coasts of Cantabria and Asturias, and adds the constellation and a woman's bodice stiffened with its baleen.^[14][5] The Academy's later editions call it a cetacean and also name the baleen plates and the strips cut from them ballena.^[15][16]

By metonymy the word also came to mean the flexible strip used to stiffen cloth, first made from baleen and later from other materials.^[17] In Cuba and in slang it is used for a very fat person.^[18][19] The Spanish word was borrowed into Tagalog and Cebuano as balyena.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – La historia de la donzella Teodor has vallena, in a 16th-century copy.^[5][12]
• before 1260 – the Evangelio de San Mateo has ballena in the story of Jonah.^[5][12]
• 1256–1263 – the Siete Partidas of Alfonso X, Corominas's first record; they also have ballener, a kind of ship, from Old Occitan.^[2][3]
• 1330–1343 – the Libro de buen amor has ballena and vallena.^[20]
• c. 1400 – the Glosario de Toledo is the first dictionary to record it.^[5]
• 1492 – Nebrija glosses Latin balaena as la vallena dela mar.^[21]
• 1535 – first record of the derivative ballenato.^[3]
• 1573 – first record in the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[22]
• 1611 – Covarrubias identifies the whale with the Leviathan.^[13]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as the largest fish of the sea.^[14]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary calls it a cetacean.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology for the first time, from Latin balaena.^[23]

Meanings

Noun

1. A whale: a very large marine cetacean, the largest animal known, which can grow to more than 30 metres long.^[4][1]
2. baleen, whalebone: each of the horny, elastic plates in the upper jaw of a whale.^[4][1]
3. A flexible strip of whalebone or of a similar material, used to stiffen corsets and other items.^[4][24]
4. (Cuba, colloquial, derogatory) A very fat person.^[18][19]

Word family

• ballenato
• ballenero
• emballenar

Related words

• Latin ballaena
• Portuguese baleia
• Catalan balena

Usage notes

Set phrases include barba de ballena “whalebone” and esperma de ballena “spermaceti”.^[4] Names of species are formed with modifiers, such as ballena azul “blue whale” and ballena franca “right whale”.^[5][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 482
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ballena
4. ^ 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. ballena
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Real Academia Española (2013–), Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (DHLE), https://www.rae.es/dhle, p. s.v. ballena
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. balaena
7. ^ Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. 374
8. ^ 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, 597
9. ^ a b Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
12. ^ 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. ballena
13. ^ 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. 272
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 537
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 115
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 88
17. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. ballena
18. ^ 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. ballena
19. ^ a b León, Víctor (1980), Diccionario de argot español y lenguaje popular, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, p. s.v. ballena
20. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 68
21. ^ 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. ballena
22. ^ 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. ballena
23. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 132
24. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ballena