barbado

Forms

barbado (feminine barbada, masculine plural barbados, feminine plural barbadas)^[1] Old Spanish texts also spell it baruado and baruada.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin barbātus (“bearded”), from barba (“beard”) with the suffix -ātus.^[3][1][4][5] The Academy's 2001 dictionary and Alemany took it instead as the past participle of barbar “to grow a beard”, a verb not recorded before the 16th century.^[6][7][8]

The same Latin adjective gave Portuguese barbado, Galician barbado, Catalan barbat, Italian barbato and Romanian bărbat.^[9][4] In Romanian it came to mean “man, husband”, since the beard marked the grown man.^[9] Navarre has the reduced form balbao.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140) praises the hero as bien barbado “well bearded”: Dios, commo es bien barbado.^[10][11] In the earliest texts the adjective with bien or mal described a fair or an ugly face.^[10]

Semantic evolution

In the Libro de buen amor the plural los barbados “the bearded ones” is used of he-goats.^[12][10] Thieves' cant kept that sense: Hidalgo's glossary of 1609 gives barbado as “he-goat”, and Autoridades repeats it.^[13][14] As a noun the word also meant simply “a man”, as in Quevedo.^[14]

A farming sense grew from the barbas or fine roots of plants: in Aragon a barbado was a vine cutting already rooted for planting, and the Academy later added a rooted tree and a sucker from the roots.^[14][15] The phrase plantar de barbado means to transplant a shoot or cutting that has already taken root.^[3][16] Astronomers spoke of a cometa barbado, a comet with a tail on one side only.^[14]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid calls the Cid bien barbado.^[11][12]
• 1250–1279 – the Lapidario of Alfonso X describes a mancebo barbado, a bearded youth.^[17]
• 1330–1343 – the Libro de buen amor uses los barbados for he-goats.^[12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin barbatus.^[10]
• 1515 – first record in the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[18]
• 1605 – the Quijote has el bien barbado barbero, the barber in a false beard.^[19]
• 1609 – Hidalgo's glossary of thieves' cant gives the sense “he-goat”.^[13]
• 1726 – Autoridades records the noun “man” and the Aragonese sense “rooted vine cutting”.^[14]
• 1770 – the Academy adds the sense “sucker growing from the roots of a tree”.^[15]

Meanings

Adjective

1. bearded, having a beard.^[3][1] Of people also used as a noun: Entró un barbado con sombrero de ala ancha.^[3][1][20]

Noun

1. (agriculture) A tree planted with its roots, or a rooted vine cutting used to plant vineyards.^[3][20]
2. (agriculture) A sucker or shoot growing from the roots of a tree or shrub.^[3]

Related words

• barba
• barbudo
• barbar
• Latin barbātus
• Portuguese barbado

Usage notes

The feminine noun barbada is the name of a fish of the cod family, so called from the barbel on its lower jaw.^[3] In the Canaries barbado is said of a fish-hook or harpoon with a barb at the point.^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. barbado
3. ^ 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. barbado
4. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 925
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. barbado
7. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 224
8. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. barba
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ a b c d 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. 494
11. ^ a b Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 87
12. ^ a b c Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 70
13. ^ a b Hidalgo, Juan (1609), Romances de germanía de varios autores, con el vocabulario por la orden del a.b.c. para declaración de sus términos y lengua, Barcelona: Sebastián de Cormellas (ed. Madrid 1779), p. 161
14. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 556
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1770), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 2nd ed., vol. I: A–B, Madrid: Joachín Ibarra, p. 1, 444
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 119
17. ^ 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. barbado
18. ^ 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. barbado
19. ^ 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. 168
20. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. barbado
21. ^ Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. barbado