cabrero

Forms

cabrero m (plural cabreros, feminine cabrera, feminine plural cabreras)^[1] Old Spanish and Aragonese documents also have caurero (in the Nájera cartulary, dated 1137 with a query), caureros (Daroca, 1256) and the Aragonese cabrer (Huesca, 1284).^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin caprārius (“goatherd”).^[3][1][4][5] The Latin word is formed from caper (“goat”) with the suffix -ārius, which made agent nouns.^[1] Within Spanish it reads as cabra with the suffix -ero, and Corominas lists it among the derivatives of that noun.^[1][6] Wiktionary names the learned borrowing caprario as its doublet.^[1]

The same Latin word is Portuguese cabreiro, Galician cabreiro, French chevrier, Italian capraio and Romanian căprar.^[4][5] Modern Catalan has cabrer.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Hispanic Seminary's texts first show cabrero in three 14th-century manuscripts of the Fuero general de Navarra, the law code of Navarre.^[8] The sense is the one the word still has, a man who herds goats.^[8][9] Autoridades quotes an early chronicle, the Crónica general: Un cabrero assaz sabidor de la tierra le encaminó à la hueste “a goatherd who knew the land well led him to the army”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija gave cabrero and cabrerizo side by side as the Spanish for Latin caprarius.^[10] In 1611 Covarrubias recorded the old proverb Pedro para cabrero, said of a man old enough to live quietly and give up youthful follies.^[11] Autoridades added a gaming sense in 1729: a player who likes to make a partner who has lost pay a forfeit, with the proverb Quien compañero tiene cabrero, no ha perdido del todo el dinero.^[9] Gaspar y Roig still listed this sense as vulgar in the 1850s.^[12]

In Cuba the word names a small brightly coloured cage bird of the genus Spindalis, recorded by Pichardo and by Alemany in 1917.^[13][14] In Argentina and Uruguay cabrero is a colloquial adjective for a person in a bad temper or easily annoyed.^[15] Malaret recorded ponerse cabrero “to get very angry” in Argentina.^[15][16]

Timeline

• 1137? – caurero in the cartulary of Nájera, the first record DEMel gives.^[2]
• 1256 – caureros in a document from Daroca.^[2]
• 1300s – cabrero in manuscripts of the Fuero general de Navarra.^[8]
• 1495 – Nebrija's dictionary, the date Corominas gives for the word.^[6][10]
• 1579 – first record from the Americas, in Havana: Andrés, negro, cabrero.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the proverb Pedro para cabrero.^[11]
• 1729 – Autoridades defines the goatherd and the gaming sense.^[9]
• 1917 – Alemany records the Cuban bird.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A goatherd, a man or woman who looks after goats: El cabrero bajó del monte con el rebaño al anochecer.^[3][1]
2. (Cuba) A small songbird of the genus Spindalis, with a black and white striped head and an orange-yellow body, often kept in a cage.^[3][14]

Word family

• cabrería

Related words

• cabra
• cabrerizo
• caprario
• Latin caprārius
• Portuguese cabreiro

Usage notes

The DLE lists a separate cabrero (its cabrero²), a colloquial adjective of Argentina for a person who is often bad-tempered, aggressive or irritated, without an etymology.^[3][15] The feminine cabrera is also a surname, as Covarrubias noted.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cabrero
3. ^ a b c d 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. cabrero
4. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. caprarius
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cabra
7. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. cabrer
8. ^ a b c Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. cabrero
9. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 33
10. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 307
11. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1, 369
12. ^ 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, 433
13. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 291
14. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cabrero
15. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. cabrero
16. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 176
17. ^ 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. cabrero