bastardo

Forms

bastardo (feminine bastarda, masculine plural bastardos, feminine plural bastardas)^[1] Old Spanish texts, especially Navarrese and Aragonese ones, also have the French form bastart.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old French bastart (“illegitimate child”), a word of uncertain origin; as in Italy, it probably came from French by way of Occitan.^[3][4][5] The dates and the suffix show the French origin: French bâtard is of the 12th century, Old Occitan bastart of the second half of the 12th, Italian bastardo of the 13th and Catalan bastard of 1403.^[3]

Most scholars derive it from a noun for the place where the child was conceived, comparing German Bankert “child of the bench”, Old Norse hornungr “child of the corner” and Old Occitan sebenc “child of the hedge”, to which Corominas adds Santander bardaliego.^[3] One proposal takes that noun as Proto-Germanic *bansti (“barn”), but this Germanic word left no other trace in Romance.^[3] Another, defended by Diez and Spitzer, derives it from Old French bast (“packsaddle”), alluding to the affairs of muleteers with inn maids such as Maritornes in Don Quixote.^[3][4] Old French also had the variant fils de bast, though the noun itself is an Occitan word in French.^[3][4][6] Schuchardt and Gamillscheg relate it instead to vástago “shoot” and bastón, because in Genoa and the Trentino the word means a wild shoot of a plant.^[3] Corominas rejects the Academy's old derivation from Spanish basto “coarse”, since the first sense is “illegitimate child”, not “degenerate”.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to the end of the 14th century, in the Crónica of King Peter the Cruel, and finds it as a personal name already in 1206.^[3][4] López de Ayala's Libro de la caza de las aves (1386) uses it of hawks, falcones bastardos, in the sense “hybrid”.^[7]

Semantic evolution

In the 15th century it is said especially of a child born outside marriage.^[7] Nebrija (1495) also records bastardo as a wine made from raisins.^[8] Covarrubias (1611) gives the general sense “coarse, not made by rule”, and the trompeta bastarda, the letra bastarda or bastardilla and a sail of ships and galleys.^[9] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1726) defines the adjective as what departs from its first nature and purity, as bastard species of animals and plants, repeats an Arabic etymology of Guadix cited by Covarrubias, and records bastardo as a large poisonous snake of Castile.^[10]

The DHLE dates the nautical sense “main sail of a galley” to 1430, the sense “piece of artillery longer than the common cannon” to 1580–1590, and the sense boa to the Academy's dictionary of 1817.^[11] Today it is also an insult, “a person who acts in bad faith”, and in Nicaraguan youth slang means “foolish”.^[5][12]

Timeline

• 1206 – Bastardo as a personal name.^[3]
• 1386 – López de Ayala's book of hawking has falcones bastardos.^[7]
• late 14th century – the Crónica of Peter the Cruel, the first record of the word in Corominas.^[3][4]
• 1430 – the sense “main sail of a galley”, in an ordinance of Admiral Fadrique.^[11]
• 1495 – Nebrija records bastardo as a raisin wine, and the noun bastardía.^[8][4]
• 1582 – the verb bastardear is first recorded.^[3][4]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the letra bastarda.^[9]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the snake bastardo.^[10][11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Degenerating from its origin or nature; of plants, of a poorer kind than the true species.^[5][13]
2. Of a child, born outside marriage, illegitimate.^[5][1]
3. (Nicaragua, youth slang) Of a person, foolish.^[12]

Noun

1. A bastard, an illegitimate son or daughter.^[5][1]
2. A person who acts in bad faith; also an insult.^[5]
3. A boa.^[5][11]
4. (nautical) A kind of parrel (racamento); also a sail formerly used on ships and galleys.^[5][11]
5. (western Spain) A large snake.^[5][10]
6. (feminine) A letra bastarda, a sloping handwriting; also a fine file used by locksmiths.^[5]

Word family

• bastardear
• bastardía
• bastardilla

Related words

• French bâtard
• Italian bastardo

Usage notes

The italic type is called bastardilla, first recorded by Terreros (1765–1783).^[3][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d 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. bastardo
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 537
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. bastardo
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. bastardo
6. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. bastardo
7. ^ 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. 502
8. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 302
9. ^ 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. 287
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, 570
11. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (DHLE), https://www.rae.es/dhle
12. ^ 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. bastardo
13. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. bastardo