bosque

Forms

bosque m (plural bosques)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Catalan bosc or Occitan bosc, a word that these languages share with French, the dialects of northern Italy and the Germanic languages; its origin is uncertain.^[2][3] Prat Sabater counts it among the words for which the DCECH names both Catalan and Occitan as the source, and Colón takes Catalan as the intermediary between Occitan and Spanish.^[4] It is late in Spanish and in Galician-Portuguese, where the modern form bosque long alternated with bosco.^[2][5]

By contrast the Catalan and Occitan words, French bois and northern Italian bosco are old: Medieval Latin boscus appears in charters of these areas from 987, 874, 949 and the 9th century respectively.^[2] The DLE calls the origin unknown.^[6] Many derive it from the Frankish word *busk (“bush”), from Proto-Germanic *buskaz, the source of Old High German busc, German Busch and English bush.^[7][1] The DHLF holds that the age of the word in Germanic rules out a borrowing from Romance, but the dictionaries of Kluge, Skeat and Gamillscheg took the Germanic word from Romance.^[7][2] Braune, Wartburg's FEW and the REW took the reverse view.^[2] Corominas objects that the Romance vowel is always open, which does not fit a base with /u/, while the base with /o/ that Braune and Wartburg assume is less widespread in Germanic.^[2] Kaufmann thought of a pre-Roman, Celtic or Ligurian, source, which the Breve diccionario also considers possible; in his Catalan dictionary Coromines calls the word pre-Latin and pre-Germanic, from an indigenous language that may have been Indo-European.^[2][3][8]

Corominas rejects Baist's derivation from Ancient Greek βοσκή (boskḗ), which means only “pasture”, and a base Vulgar Latin *arbuscum, a cross of Latin arbustum and arbusculum.^[2] Covarrubias had offered both the Greek verb and the French word for “wood”, and Autoridades a Gothic origin.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest hits are a Cuento de Otas de Roma of about 1300–1325, known from a copy of the late 14th or early 15th century, with the form bosco, and an aljamiado poem of about 1300 in praise of Muhammad.^[11] The first secure record is in Ferrer Sayol's translation of Palladius (1380–1385), on clearing a wooded field: „E ssi el campo sera bosque” “and if the field is woodland”.^[11] The DCECH's first record is Mena's Coronación, with Nebrija, and the Breve diccionario dates the word 1490.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Corominas notes that the word is missing from most medieval texts and replaced the native soto and selva only late; the Sephardim of Monastir still avoid it.^[2] Nebrija translated it with Latin silva and nemus.^[12] Autoridades defined it as hilly land full of trees and thick bushes, whose timber serves for building and where deer and other game are bred, and the Academy of 1817 as a place of trees destined for hunting.^[10][13]

In the thieves' cant (germanía) bosque meant “beard”, already in Hidalgo's vocabulary of 1609 and in Autoridades.^[14][10] Cervantes used it in the same way of a face “hecho un bosque” with beard.^[15] Today it also means a confused tangle of things.^[6] In Nicaraguan, Dominican and Puerto Rican baseball it is the outfield.^[16][17] In New Mexico it names a cottonwood grove along water, and English borrowed it in that sense.^[18][1]

Timeline

• 874–987 – Medieval Latin boscus appears in charters of the Occitan, French and Catalan areas.^[2]
• c. 1300–1325 – the form bosco in the Cuento de Otas de Roma (in a later copy).^[11]
• 1380–1385 – Ferrer Sayol's Libro de Palladio has bosque.^[11]
• 1385 – Juan Fernández de Heredia's Gran crónica de España has the plural bosques.^[11]
• 1490 – the date of the Breve diccionario.^[3]
• 1495 – Nebrija has emboscar and desemboscar.^[3]
• 1571 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico City.^[19]
• 1609 – Hidalgo's cant vocabulary glosses it “beard”.^[14]
• 1611 – Covarrubias proposes Gothic, French or Greek origins.^[9]
• 1884 – the Academy derives it from German Busch.^[20]

Meanings

Noun

1. A forest or wood: a place covered with trees and bushes.^[6][1]
2. A disordered mass of something; a tangle, an intricate matter: un bosque de cables.^[6][21]
3. A thick, tangled beard or head of hair.^[21]
4. (thieves' cant) A beard.^[6]
5. (Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico; baseball) The outfield.^[16]

Word family

• boscaje
• emboscar
• emboscada
• desemboscar
• boscoso
• bosquete
• sotobosque
• guardabosque

Related words

• selva
• soto
• Catalan bosc
• French bois
• Italian bosco

Usage notes

Corominas notes that boscoso “wooded”, common in Argentina, Chile and Peru, was not accepted by the Academy, which admitted only arbolado and selvoso.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 636
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. bosque
4. ^ Prat Sabater, Marta (2003), Préstamos del catalán en el léxico español, doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, p. 33–34
5. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 566
6. ^ 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. bosque
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. bois
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. 2, 143
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. 334
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, 658
11. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. bosque
12. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 305
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 139
14. ^ 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. 163
15. ^ 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. 197
16. ^ 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. bosque
17. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. bosque
18. ^ Cobos, Rubén (1983), A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, p. 40
19. ^ 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. bosque
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 163
21. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. bosque