burdel

Forms

burdel m (plural burdeles)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Catalan bordell, or perhaps Occitan bordel, both meaning “brothel”.^[2][3][4][1] The word appears almost at the same time in Occitan (early 13th century), French bordel (13th century), Catalan (end of the 13th century) and Italian bordello (about 1300).^[3] Corominas thinks Italian took it early from southern France, since it lacks the base word, and that the French word fell out of use until the 17th century, when it came back from Italy; Portuguese bordel (15th century) is a loan too.^[3] Autoridades and the Spanish Wikcionario derive it from French.^[5][6]

Its further origin is uncertain: Corominas derives it, probably, from bord (“bastard”), as a “place of outcast people, where bastards are begotten”, independently of borda (“hut”).^[3][7] The Catalan word is the source of borde “bastard”, and comes from Late Latin burdus (“mule”).^[8] Corominas's Breve diccionario, Bénaben, Alcover–Moll and Wikcionario instead make it a diminutive of the word for “hut”, which is from Frankish *bord (“plank”): a house of planks.^{[4][9][10][6]} Covarrubias had already linked it with the Latin word for “mule”, the offspring of a mixed union.^[11]

Spanish always has ⟨u⟩ in the first syllable (as in Álvaro de Luna, Nebrija and Palencia), which, given its date, cannot come from the later pronunciation of pretonic /o/ as /u/ in Eastern Catalan or in Occitan and French; the same happens in burdégano.^[3] The native words were putería and mancebía, beside which the foreign word came in as a euphemism.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record of the word is in the Castigos of Sancho IV (1293): con aquellas que non filan y estan enel lugar desonesto que es el burdel “with those women who do not spin and are in the dishonest place that is the brothel”.^[12][13][3] Earlier CDH hits, from 1253 on, are the place name Burdel “Bordeaux”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th and 17th centuries the word was also an adjective, “lustful, depraved”: Autoridades quotes Fray Luis de León's La perfecta casada on el cuerpo burdél.^[5] The Academy marked the adjective as old from 1770, and described the brothels as houses that “formerly” existed in many cities.^[14][15] Salvá in 1846 noted that the name was still given to a house where women of ill fame lived together.^[16] The figurative sense of a house or place of noisy disorder appears in the Academy's dictionary in 1884.^[17] In Leonese burdel is also disorder in a house and gossip.^[18]

Timeline

• 1223 – Prat Sabater cites a record in a document of complaints about the boundary of Santa Ovenia.^[19]
• 1253 – Burdel as the name of Bordeaux in a charter.^[12]
• 1293 – the Castigos of Sancho IV use burdel “brothel”.^[12][13]
• c. 1400–1421 – the Libro de los exemplos: Vas al burdel donde estan las putas.^[13]
• 1513 – Nebrija glosses it lupanar, lustrum, prostibulum.^[20]
• 1591 – Percyvall translates it “the stewes”.^[21]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Latin burdus “mule”.^[11]
• 1770 – the Academy marks the adjective “lustful” as old.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy adds the figurative sense and derives it from Low Latin burdellum.^[17]
• 1899 – the Academy derives it instead from bordellum, a diminutive of borda “hovel”.^[22]

Meanings

Noun

1. A brothel, a place where prostitution is practised.^[2][1]
2. (colloquial, pejorative) A place where immorality or corruption reigns.^[2]

Adjective

1. (obsolete) lustful, depraved.^[15][23]

Related words

• borde
• lupanar
• prostíbulo
• Catalan bordell

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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. burdel
3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 697
4. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. burdel
5. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 715
6. ^ a b Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. burdel
7. ^ 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, 107
8. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 625
9. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. burdel
10. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. bordell
11. ^ 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. 355
12. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. burdel
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. 560
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1770), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 2nd ed., vol. I: A–B, Madrid: Joachín Ibarra, p. 1, 547
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 148
16. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 176
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 173
18. ^ Le Men Loyer, Janick (2002–2012), Léxico del leonés actual, 4 vols., León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro; electronic version, Universidad de León, p. s.v. burdel
19. ^ Prat Sabater, Marta (2003), Préstamos del catalán en el léxico español, doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, p. 376
20. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 306
21. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 83
22. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 160
23. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. burdel