cabeza

Forms

cabeza f (plural cabezas)^[1] Old Spanish wrote cabeça, also cabesça and kapeças.^[2][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cabeça, inherited from Vulgar Latin capitia, the form that replaced caput (“head”) in the Vulgar Latin of Hispania.^[3][4][5][1] The new word took the place of the old one in Portuguese cabeça, Castilian, Corsican cavezza and the old dialect of Sassari, while the other Romance languages kept the Latin word.^[3] Spanish kept that word too, as cabo “end, cape”.^[6][7]

How the Vulgar Latin form arose is not well understood.^[3] Corominas suggests a collective plural of the Latin noun, formed like animalia beside animal: its first sense would have been “head of cattle”, as in the collective uses of Catalan cabeça, and it would have spread to people when cabo had taken on too many senses.^[3] The weak point, he notes, is that no such plural is recorded in Latin.^[3] He also allows a noun made from an adjective, like ceniza and corteza, or the Latin capitium “hood, opening of a tunic”, which survives in Old French chevez (now chevet “bedhead”) and in cabeç “neck of a shirt”.^[3] Wiktionary takes the Vulgar Latin form as the neuter plural of this noun, a diminutive of the word for “head”, reinterpreted as a feminine singular.^[1] For the OLD the noun is a kind of woman's tunic, probably derived from the word for “head”.^[8] Bénaben explains the new word as a way to avoid confusion with the inherited outcome of the Latin word.^[7]

The Old Spanish ⟨ç⟩ was voiceless, and still is in Judeo-Spanish and in the speech of Cáceres and Salamanca;^[9] Corominas finds this voiceless sound hard to explain.^[3]

The Latin noun continues Proto-Italic *kaput.^[9] Its Germanic cognates go back to *haubud-: Old English hēafod and Old High German houbit, whence German Haupt and English head.^[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is a document of 957 published in Menéndez Pidal's Orígenes.^[3][4] In the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) the hero, leaving his house, tornava la cabeça e estávalos catando “turned his head and stood looking at them”.^[10] The Fuero de Madrid has the oath iuret per sua cabeza “let him swear by his head”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The figurative sense “head, chief part” is early: the Cortes de León of 1208, the first hit in a text without a later copy, speak of the clergy en la cabeza como en los miembros “in the head as in the members”.^[10] Old Spanish texts, from the Fuero de Sepúlveda and the Cid to the 15th century, use the word for the head of a person and of an animal.^[11][2]

The Diccionario de Autoridades derived it from Latin caput and distinguished the whole head from its upper part, where the hair grows, as in dolor de cabeza.^[12] The Academy's dictionary of 1884 also gave the ends of a beam or bridge and the head of a nail.^[13] The DLE adds the top of a mountain, the source of a river, the mind, judgement, a person, a head of cattle and a capital city.^[5]

In the Americas the first record is from Puerto Rico in 1512.^[14] Mexico and Nicaragua call the winding crown of a watch cabeza; in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia it is a bunch of bananas, and in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Peru, as a masculine, a leader.^[15] In Argentina en cabeza means “bareheaded”.^[3] In Andalusia the masculine el cabeza is a colloquial word for “guy”.^[1]

Timeline

• 957 – the first record, in a document published by Menéndez Pidal.^[3][4]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has cabeça (in a 14th-century copy).^[10][11]
• 1208 – the Cortes de León use cabeza of the head of the clergy.^[10]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses it for the head of a figure among the stars.^[16]
• 1512 – the first record in the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades derives it from Latin caput.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the ends of a beam and the head of a nail.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. (anatomy) head: the upper part of the human body, and the upper or front part of many animals, containing the brain and the main sense organs.^[5][1]
2. The head of a sheep prepared as food.^[5][17]
3. The upper and back part of the head, from the forehead to the neck, excluding the face: Me duele la cabeza.^[5]
4. The beginning or end of something: las dos cabezas del tablón.^[5]
5. The rounded end of a nail or pin, opposite the point.^[5]
6. The top of a mountain; the source or start of something that flows: la cabeza de un río.^[5]
7. mind, the ability to reason; judgement, talent: No se le pasó por la cabeza.^[5][1]
8. A person, an individual; a head of cattle.^[5]
9. The capital, the chief town of a territory.^[5]
10. (Mexico, Nicaragua) The crown of a watch, used to wind it.^[15]
11. (Nicaragua, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia) A bunch of bananas or plantains.^[15]
12. (masculine, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Peru) A leader.^[15]

Word family

• cabecear
• cabecera
• cabecilla
• cabezada
• cabezal
• cabezo
• cabezón
• cabezota
• cabezudo
• cabezuela
• descabezar
• encabezar
• cabeciduro
• cabizbajo
• apoyacabeza

Related words

• cabo
• Latin caput
• Portuguese cabeça

Usage notes

Cabeza a pájaros is a scatterbrained person, and cabeza cuadrada a methodical, stubborn one.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cabeza
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 711
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cabeza
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. cabeza
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1397
7. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. cabeza
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ 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. cabeza
11. ^ 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. 570
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 18
13. ^ 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. 179
14. ^ 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. cabeza
15. ^ 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. cabeza
16. ^ 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. cabeza
17. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cabeza