cabello

Forms

cabello m (plural cabellos)^[1] Corominas's first record, of 1050, is spelt kapello; the spelling cabello appears in 1219.^[2] Medieval texts also have capello, cabiello and cabelos.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cabello, inherited from Latin capillus (“hair of the head”).^[2][5][6][1] Lanchetas, writing on Berceo's language, explains the ⟨e⟩ of the stressed syllable by a general change of Latin /i/ to /e/ before /l/, as in concejo beside concilio.^[7]

The same Latin word is Portuguese cabelo, Galician cabelo, Catalan cabell, Occitan cabel, French cheveu and Italian capello.^[8][9][1] Coromines notes that in Old Occitan the plural of the word was often cabilh, and that a palatal /j/ for ⟨ll⟩ still survives in parts of Catalan and in the Balearics.^[10]

Wiktionary and Lewis & Short take the Latin word for a diminutive related to caput (“head”).^[1][11] De Vaan finds this hard to accept: a derivative of the word for “head” should have ended in ⟨-ullus⟩, and a diminutive meaning “little head” is an unlikely source for “hair”; he leaves the word without an etymology.^[12] The DHLF also calls the links with the words for “head” and pilus (“a hair”) doubtful.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the first record to 1050, in the spelling kapello.^[2][5] Among the CDH's literary texts, the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy) has the word in an oath: Non cadrá un cabello de to fijo en tierra “not one hair of your son shall fall to the ground”.^[4] The Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (1218–c. 1250) has a heading on the man who seizes a woman por los cabellos “by the hair”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish the word was mostly used in the plural.^[14] The Tentative Dictionary and Alonso define it as each of the hairs that grow on the head, as in the Gospel line los cabellos de nuestra cabeça todos son contados (c. 1254–1270).^[14][15] Berceo uses it, like other words for tiny things, after a negative to mean “nothing at all”: quanto val un cabello “as much as a hair is worth”.^[7] The collective noun was at first cabelladura (c. 1280, still in 1629); cabellera meant “wig” for Nebrija before it took over the sense “head of hair”.^[2]

The Diccionario de Autoridades notes that the word can name one hair or the whole hair of the head, and that a single hair is un cabello; it argued from the Latin capillus that the word should be written with ⟨b⟩.^[16] It also records proverbs such as cabello luengo y corto el seso, said of people who care more for their looks than for their judgement.^[16] The Academy's 1843 edition records cabello de ángel, a sweet cut into thin threads, and Salvá's dictionary of 1846 the silk of a maize cob.^[17][18] Today Moliner marks the word as little used in ordinary speech, where pelo is the usual word.^[19]

In the Americas cabello de ángel also names the silk of maize in Mexico and Bolivia, parasitic dodder plants in Chile and Argentina, and a very fine noodle in Ecuador.^[20] Baralt condemned en cabellos “bareheaded” as a Gallicism and defended the Spanish en cabello, which Cervantes uses.^[21]

Timeline

• 1050 – first record, spelt kapello.^[2][5]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (in a 13th-century copy) has cabello.^[4]
• c. 1205–1250 – the Razón de amor describes a girl with cabelos cortos sobr'ell oreia “short hair over the ear”.^[4]
• 1219 – Corominas's first record of the spelling cabello.^[2]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario tells how to dye the hair black with a wine mixed with henna.^[22]
• c. 1280 – the Primera Crónica General has the collective cabelladura.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija records cabellera and descabellar; his 1513 Vocabulario gives Latin capillus and crinis.^[5][23]
• 1535 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico: traen los cabellos fasta la cinta “they wear their hair down to the waist”.^[24]
• 1611 – Covarrubias explains the Latin word as capitis pilus “hair of the head”.^[25]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades gives the word, its proverbs and the phrase asirse de un cabello “to seize on the slightest pretext”.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del lat. capillus” for the first time.^[26]

Meanings

Noun

1. The hair of the head as a whole: Llevaba el cabello recogido en una trenza.^[6][1]
2. Each single hair of the head.^[6][1][19]
3. (in the plural) The silk of a maize cob.^[6][19]
4. cabello de ángel: a sweet made of the stringy flesh of a squash in syrup; in parts of the Americas, also fine noodles or a parasitic plant.^[6][19][20]

Word family

• cabellar
• cabelludo
• cabellera
• descabellar
• descabellado
• cabelladura

Related words

• pelo
• Latin capillus
• Portuguese cabelo

Usage notes

In everyday speech pelo is far more common;^[27] cabello belongs to more careful language and to the language of hairdressing.^[19][27]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 710
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cabello
4. ^ 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. cabello
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cabello
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. cabello
7. ^ a b Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. s.v. cabello
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1638
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1390
10. ^ 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, 368
11. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
14. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 86
15. ^ 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. 569
16. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 15
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 120
18. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 181
19. ^ a b c d e Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cabello
20. ^ 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. cabello
21. ^ Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 132
22. ^ 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. cabello
23. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 307
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. cabello
25. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 362
26. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 178
27. ^ a b Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. cabello