bruto

Forms

bruto (feminine bruta, masculine plural brutos, feminine plural brutas)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin brūtus (“heavy; dull, stupid”), recorded from 1440.^[2][3][4][1] The REW counts the Romance forms as Latinisms, because the word appears late everywhere: Italian brutto, French brut, Occitan brut, Catalan brut and Portuguese bruto.^[5] In Genoese, Lombard, Occitan and Catalan it has come to mean “dirty”.^[5][6] Corominas's Catalan dictionary derives these forms from an intensive Vulgar Latin *bruttus, which the REW rejects.^[6][5]

The Latin word meant “heavy” in its rare oldest uses and is usually taken for an Osco-Umbrian dialect word, with Proto-Indo-European *gʷ- becoming ⟨b⟩, from the same stem as gravis (“heavy”).^[7] De Vaan reconstructs *gʷrūto- and *gʷrh₂-u-to- (“heavy”), with the cognate Latvian grūts (“heavy”).^[7] Wiktionary compares Ancient Greek βαρύς (barús, “heavy”) and Sanskrit गुरु (gurú).^[1]

García de Diego follows Cornu in tracing burdo “coarse” to the same Latin word, while the REW rejects this.^[8][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the first record to 1440, in Rodríguez de la Cámara.^[2] By the end of the 15th century it described coarse, brutish people: Pulgar's chronicle (c. 1484) calls the North African raiders brutos animales, and Encina's Cancionero (1496) has los brutos pastores “the uncouth shepherds”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias in 1611 takes the word chiefly for the irrational four-footed animal, slow, coarse and cruel, explains brutos for men of little reason by the feigned dullness of Junius Brutus, and notes that Tuscan bruto means “dirty, ugly”.^[10] Autoridades has the noun for horses, mules and asses, a metaphorical sense “vicious, dissolute person” and the adjective “irrational, stupid”.^[11]

The phrase en bruto “unpolished”, as in diamante en bruto, and “weighed without deducting the tare” is in the Academy's dictionary of 1843.^[12] An early commercial use comes from Puebla in 1556, a 117 por çiento bruto “at 117 per cent gross”.^[13] Today the adjective also means “gross”, as opposed to neto, and “crude, in its natural state” (petróleo bruto), and the noun names crude oil.^[4][14]

In parts of Latin America it praises size or quality (Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay); in Honduras and El Salvador the feminine bruta is slang for a pistol, and in Honduras for beer and for death.^[15][4] In Chile gallo bruto was a native fighting cock, as opposed to the English breed.^[16]

Timeline

• 1440 – first record, in Rodríguez de la Cámara.^[2][3]
• c. 1484 – Pulgar's chronicle uses brutos of brutish men.^[9]
• 1490 – first record of the derivative brutal.^[3]
• 1495 – first record of embrutecer, in Nebrija.^[3][2]
• 1533 – first record from the Americas, in Cuzco.^[13]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines the noun as the irrational four-footed animal.^[10]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary records en bruto.^[12]

Meanings

Adjective

1. stupid, ignorant, incapable; also as a noun: No seas bruto, eso no se hace así.^[4][1]
2. Given to vice, coarse in one's habits.^[4]
3. rough, violent, lacking consideration or manners.^[4][1]
4. Of a thing: rough, unpolished.^[4]
5. Of a sum of money: gross, before deductions, as opposed to neto.^[4][1]
6. Of a product: in its natural state, crude.^[4]
7. (colloquial, Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua) Impressive in quantity or quality.^[4]

Noun

1. A brute: an irrational animal, especially a four-footed one.^[4][1]
2. Crude oil.^[4]
3. (feminine, El Salvador, Honduras) A pistol (pistola).^[4]

Word family

• brutal
• brutez
• embrutecer
• abrutado
• cerebruto

Related words

• grave
• Latin brūtus
• Italian brutto
• Portuguese bruto

Usage notes

A lo bruto means “without limit” or “roughly, by brute force”, and en bruto “unpolished, raw”.^[4][14] Moliner notes el noble bruto for the horse.^[14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 684
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. bruto
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. bruto
5. ^ a b c d Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1348
6. ^ a b 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, 306
7. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 1158
9. ^ a b 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. 554
10. ^ 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. 344
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 691
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 115
13. ^ 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. bruto
14. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. bruto
15. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. bruto, ta
16. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 279