calavera

Forms

calavera f (plural calaveras)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin calvāria (“skull”), a derivative of calvus (“bald”).^[2][3][4][1] Latin used this word for the skull throughout the late period and already in Pliny.^[2][5] The Spanish form goes back to an expected *calvera, in which an /a/ grew between /l/ and /v/;^[3][2][6] Corominas thinks that popular confusion with the family of cadáver helped this change, since medieval Spanish also had calabrina and the vulgar calabre, both meaning “corpse”.^[3][2][6]

The same Latin word is Catalan calavera, Portuguese caveira and Galician caveira.^[2][7][8] García de Diego derived the Spanish word from the plural of cadāver (“corpse”);^[2][9][7] Corominas rejects this, because it needs a shift of stress and a change of /d/ to /l/, and because the Portuguese and Galician diphthong points to the word for skull.^[2][9] Meyer-Lübke, Menéndez Pidal and Wartburg also accept that etymon, and Meyer-Lübke allows that the word for corpse may have influenced the first syllable.^[2][7] Alcover and Moll's Catalan dictionary calls the etymology uncertain and quotes both views.^[10] Wiktionary calls the derivation from the plural of the word for corpse a folk etymology.^[1]

The Latin adjective goes back, according to de Vaan, to Proto-Indo-European *klH-e/ou̯o- (“bald”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is Berceo: in the Signos del juicio final (1236–1246, known from an 18th-century copy) the line non se terná en pie ninguna calavera uses the word for a living human body, not a skull.^[2][12] The Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250) already has the modern sense of “skull”, and the mid-13th-century Gospel of Matthew calls Golgotha logar de calaueras “place of skulls”.^[2][12][13]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish and Old Catalan sometimes used the word for a whole skeleton or a corpse, a use Corominas explains by the confusion with cadáver.^[2][14] The popular variant calaverna was common in the 15th and 16th centuries: Nebrija gives calaverna de cabeça, the first records from the Americas (Michoacán, 1541) have it, and Covarrubias in 1611 calls it the coarse form of the word.^[15][16][17] Covarrubias also links the word with Mount Calvary, named, he says, for the many skulls of the crucified left unburied there.^[17]

The 1729 volume of the Diccionario de Autoridades added the jocular sense “head” and the phrases cara de calavera for a snub-nosed face and dar por calavera “to give up for dead”.^[18] The sense “reckless, dissolute man” is in Jovellanos in 1773; the Academy recorded it in 1817 as “a person of little judgement”, used as a masculine noun.^[2][19] Corominas suggests it may be a semantic calque of Arabic, where the word for skull, qiḥf, in its plural also meant “vile, good-for-nothing men”.^[2] In Mexico the word names the sugar skulls and the satirical mock-epitaphs of the Day of the Dead, the treat children ask for that day, and the rear lights of a car.^[20][21][4]

Timeline

• 1115 – the place name Calaveiras (now Calaveras, near Sahagún), from the sense “bare, treeless place”.^[2]
• 1236–1246 – Berceo's Signos del juicio final (in an 18th-century copy), the first record.^[2][12]
• 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre uses it for “skull”.^[2]
• c. 1280 – Alfonso X's General estoria (Part IV) speaks of heaps of calaueras and bones.^[22]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives calaverna de cabeça for Latin calvaria.^[15]
• 1541 – first record from the Americas, as calaverna, in Michoacán.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias explains the word from Latin calvaria.^[17]
• 1773 – Jovellanos uses un calavera for a reckless man.^[2]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary adds this sense.^[19]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from calvaria and records calaverada.^[23]

Meanings

Noun

1. skull: the bones of the head while they stay joined, stripped of flesh and skin: En la cueva encontraron una calavera de oso.^[4][1]
2. (zoology) The death's-head hawkmoth, a heavy, hairy moth with a skull-like pattern on its thorax.^[4][1][24]
3. (El Salvador) A square electrical socket with several outlets.^[4]
4. (Mexico) Each of the two rear lights of a vehicle; a taillight.^[4][1]
5. (Mexico) A sugar skull eaten on the Day of the Dead; a mock epitaph in verse dedicated to a living person on that day; the money or treat children ask for then.^[20][21]
6. (masculine, also adjective) A dissolute, irresponsible pleasure-seeker; a rake: Su tío fue un calavera hasta los cuarenta años.^[4][1][24]

Word family

• calaverada
• descalabrar

Related words

• calvo
• calvario
• Latin calvāria
• Portuguese caveira

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 757
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. calavera
4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. calavera
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. calavera
7. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1529
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 772
9. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1298
10. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. calavera
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. calavera
13. ^ 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. 583
14. ^ 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, 410
15. ^ a b Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. calavera
16. ^ 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. calavera
17. ^ 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. 384
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 59
19. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 159
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. calavera
21. ^ a b Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 184
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. calavera
23. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 188
24. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. calavera