caballero

Forms

caballero m (plural caballeros, feminine caballera, feminine plural caballeras)^[1] Old Spanish wrote it mostly cavallero or cauallero, with variants such as caualero and the reduced cavero.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cavallero, inherited from Late Latin caballārius (“horseman; groom”), recorded from the 5th century.^[4][5][1] The Late Latin word is formed from caballus (“horse, nag”) with the suffix -ārius.^[1][6] The DLE glosses the Latin word as “stable groom”, and the REW records it as “horse keeper”, the sense of Italian cavallaro.^[7][8]

Related forms are Portuguese cavaleiro, Galician cabaleiro, Catalan cavaller, French chevalier and Italian cavaliere; the REW and the DHLF derive the Italian word from Old Occitan cavalier, and French borrowed cavalier from Italian about 1460.^{[9][10][11][12][13]}

The Latin noun first meant a gelding or workhorse, and in Vulgar Latin became the general word for “horse”, which in all the Romance languages replaced equus.^[4] De Vaan holds it to be a loanword of unclear source, independent of the Greek καβάλλης (kabállēs, “nag”);^[14][1] Corominas thinks it perhaps Celtic, and Wiktionary mentions a Gaulish source or an Asian wandering word.^[4][14][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates caballero from 1076, and caballería from 1092.^[4][5] In the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1200 in the Tentative Dictionary's dating, known from a manuscript of 1207) it means a man who fights on horseback, as opposed to the foot soldier, and also a noble knight.^[3] As an adjective it meant simply “riding”: Berceo (c. 1230) says of a woman that he does not know whether she went on foot or caballera, on horseback.^[15]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose uses the word for a rider, for a mounted soldier and for a man of the nobility.^[16] Autoridades (1726) defines the caballero as a nobleman of old standing, above the ordinary hidalgo, explains the name from going to war on horseback, and keeps the old sense “cavalryman”.^[17] From 1817 the Academy also records the knight of an order such as Santiago, Calatrava or Alcántara.^[18] The phrase caballero de industria, a swindler who lives by his wits, comes from Quevedo's Buscón and spread from Spanish to all the European languages.^[4]

By the 19th century the word also meant a man of honourable conduct and fine manners, and it became a form of polite address and the general word for “man”, as in clothes or hairdressers de caballeros.^[19][7][20] In late 19th-century Puerto Rico a countryman would address a town gentleman as cabayero.^[21] In El Salvador and Puerto Rico caballero is also the dragonfly.^[22] Spanish caballero passed into Classical Nahuatl and Tagalog, and English took it as “a Spanish gentleman” in 1861.^[1][23]

Timeline

• 1076 – first record.^[4][5]
• c. 1200 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses cavallero for the mounted warrior and the noble knight.^[3]
• c. 1230 – Berceo uses caballera as an adjective, “on horseback”.^[15]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario has omne cauallero sobre un cauallo, a man riding a horse.^[16]
• 1518 – first record in the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[24]
• 1605 – the derivative caballeresco appears in the Quijote.^[4]
• 1611 – Covarrubias compares the Roman equites.^[25]
• 1726 – Autoridades defines it as a nobleman above the ordinary hidalgo.^[17]
• 1861 – English caballero “a Spanish gentleman”.^[23]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Riding, mounted on a horse or another animal: Llegó caballero en un burro.^[7][26]
2. (obsolete) Of a person: obstinate, not to be talked out of a purpose or opinion (with en).^[7]

Noun

1. A gentleman: a man who behaves with distinction, nobility and generosity.^[7][1]
2. A courteous form of address for a man, as in señoras y caballeros.^[7]
3. A man, generally an adult, as in a shop's sección de caballeros.^[7][20]
4. A member of a civil or military order, or of an order of chivalry; a knight.^[7][1]
5. A hidalgo of recognised nobility.^[7]
6. (history) A Roman eques, of the class between patricians and plebeians that served in the cavalry; in other cultures, a noble and brave man.^[7][25]
7. A title given to cadets of military academies and members of some armed corps.^[7]
8. An old Spanish dance.^[7][23]
9. (military) A cavalier: a high inner work of a fortification that protects the others with its fire;^[22] (construction) a heap of surplus earth beside and above a cutting.^[7]
10. (El Salvador, Puerto Rico) A dragonfly;^[22] (El Salvador) a seahorse.^[22]
11. (South America) A horseman; a cowboy.^[1]

Word family

• caballería
• caballeriza
• caballeresco
• caballeroso
• caballerete
• caballerosidad

Related words

• caballo
• cabalgar
• Late Latin caballārius
• Portuguese cavaleiro
• French chevalier

Usage notes

Caballero andante “knight errant” named the hero of the books of chivalry, and in colloquial use a poor, idle hidalgo who wandered about.^[27] The feminine caballera is rare and belongs to the adjective “riding”: iba caballera en una mula.^[26][17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. caballero
3. ^ a b c Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 107
4. ^ 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, 708
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. caballo
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. caballero
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. caballero
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1438
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 1210
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1440
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. cavalier
12. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. cavaller
13. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. cavaleiro
14. ^ 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
15. ^ 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. 565
16. ^ a b 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. caballero
17. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 6
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 150
19. ^ Gaspar y Roig (eds.) (1853–1855), Biblioteca ilustrada de Gaspar y Roig: Diccionario enciclopédico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Imprenta y Librería de Gaspar y Roig, p. 1, 426
20. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. caballero
21. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. caballero
22. ^ a b c d Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. caballero
23. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
24. ^ 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. caballero
25. ^ 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. 465
26. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. caballero
27. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. caballero