barrio

Forms

barrio m (plural barrios)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote uarrio, varrio and bario.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Andalusian Arabic *bárri (“exterior”), from Arabic بَرِّيّ (barrī, “wild”).^[4][5][1] Corominas derives it from the Arabic noun for “the outskirts of a town” or, more precisely, from this adjective, which was stressed on the first syllable in Hispano-Arabic, as adjectives of this shape were.^[6][7] He grants that “exterior” is not the usual sense of the adjective, which the Arabic dictionaries mostly give as “wild”, but notes that its feminine meant “open country” in the language of the Koran, and that Freytag records the sense “external”.^[6] Corriente also takes the Andalusian form, meaning “exterior; wild”, as the source, and derives albarrana from a related Andalusian adjective with the same sense “exterior”.^[8]

The word is shared with Portuguese bairro, Galician barrio, Asturian barriu, Catalan barri and Occitan barri, and passed into Basque barrio “yard, farmyard” in the Basque of Soule and Lower Navarre.^[6][8] Several scholars had explained the Catalan and Occitan word, which also means “town wall, railing”, from Vulgar Latin *barrium (“barrier”), derived from *barra, or from a Celtic word for “fortress”.^[6][9] Corominas rejects this, because the word is older in Spain than anywhere else, and its oldest records refer to places just taken from the Moors, such as Zamora and Aranda de Duero, whose place names were still strongly Arabic.^[6] Coromines dates the Catalan word to 976.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word appears first in Latin charters: barrium in a document of 949 from Zamora, and uarrio many times in a document of 1030 concerning Aranda de Duero, where it means a small village dependent on a town, the original sense.^[6][7] The first record in a Spanish text is in Gonzalo de Berceo's Vida de San Millán (c. 1230, known from an 18th-century copy), where the saint's birthplace is el barrio de Verceo, a hamlet near Nájera.^[11][12]

Semantic evolution

From “hamlet dependent on a town” the word came to mean “outskirts, suburb” and “district of a town”;^[13] Corominas finds the latter in the Libro de Alexandre (c. 1240–1250).^[6][13] Alfonso X's prose (1270–1284) has all these senses, from the city district to the barrio vaticanno outside Rome and the villages from which early Rome was formed.^[3]

In 1611 Covarrubias explained barrio as the farmhouses of country people that grouped together into a village, and recorded the phrase nacer a barrios “to sprout in patches”, of grain and beards.^[14] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1726) defined it as a named district of a city, such as Lavapiés in Madrid, and gave andar de barrio “to go about in everyday clothes”.^[15] The Academy recorded el otro barrio “the other world” in 1869, and today has the barrio chino, the district of brothels and low life in some cities.^[16][4]

In the Americas the word is recorded from 1532 in Mexico, of the scattered quarters of a town.^[17] In Venezuela and Central America a barrio is a district of low-cost or makeshift housing, and in Puerto Rico a rural division of a municipality.^[18][19][1] English took barrio in 1841 for a ward of a Spanish-speaking city; since 1939 it has also meant a Spanish-speaking district of a US city.^[20] The word also passed into Tagalog as baryo.^[20][1]

Timeline

• 949 – barrium in a Latin charter from Zamora.^[6][7]
• 1030 – uarrio “hamlet” in a document concerning Aranda de Duero.^[6]
• c. 1230 – Berceo's Vida de San Millán names the hamlet el barrio de Verceo.^[11]
• c. 1240–1250 – barrio “district of a town” in the Libro de Alexandre.^[13][11]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España uses it for the outskirts of Rome.^[3]
• 1513 – Nebrija's Vocabulario renders barrio de villa o ciudad by Latin vicus.^[21]
• 1532 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Arabic and records nacer a barrios.^[14]
• 1625 – the sense “suburb”, according to Corominas.^[6]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades; the derivative barriada is recorded the same year.^[15][7]
• 1841 – English barrio.^[20]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the Arabic barrí “exterior” as the etymon.^[22]

Meanings

Noun

1. Each of the parts into which a town or city or its districts are divided; a neighbourhood, quarter: Se crio en un barrio obrero de Bilbao.^[4][5]
2. The outskirts of a town, a suburb (arrabal).^[4][5]
3. A group of houses or a hamlet that depends on another town though separate from it.^[4]
4. (Venezuela, Central America, Dominican Republic) A district of low-cost or makeshift housing; a slum.^[18][23][1]
5. (Puerto Rico) A rural division of a municipality.^[19]

Word family

• barriada

Related words

• albarrán
• arrabal
• Portuguese bairro
• Catalan barri
• English barrio

Usage notes

Barrio chino is a red-light district, and el otro barrio (colloquial) is the next world: irse al otro barrio “to die”, mandar al otro barrio “to kill”.^[4][24]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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. barrio
3. ^ a b c 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. barrio
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. barrio
5. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. barrio
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 527
7. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. barrio
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. albarrã
9. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. barri
10. ^ 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, 683
11. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. barrio
12. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. s.v. barrio
13. ^ 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. 500
14. ^ 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. 285
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 567
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 100
17. ^ a b 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. barrio
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. barrio
19. ^ a b Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. barrio
20. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
21. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 301
22. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 140
23. ^ Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. barrio
24. ^ León, Víctor (1980), Diccionario de argot español y lenguaje popular, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, p. s.v. barrio