camafeo

Forms

camafeo m (plural camafeos)^[1] Corominas adds the variant camajeo from Nebrija and an Aragonese inventory of 1492, and camapheo from a Toledo will of 1580.^[2] The spelling camapheo is also found in the 1494 translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus.^[3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old French camaheu, recorded from the 13th century, a word of uncertain origin, perhaps Germanic.^[2][4][5] The Spanish ⟨f⟩, like that of Catalan camafeu (1356) and Portuguese camafeu or camafeio (14th century), renders the aspirated ⟨h⟩ of the French form.^[2] Wiktionary takes the word instead from Medieval Latin camahutus, a variant of camaeus.^[1] Corominas notes the Medieval Latin forms of London, 1295, and camahorus (1315).^[2]

For the French word, the dates point to northern France, and the aspirated ⟨h⟩ suggests a Germanic source.^[2] Corominas would partly revive Mahn's idea: the first syllables from Old High German kimma, itself from Latin gemma (“gem”), and the rest perhaps from a Germanic word for the hilt of a sword, the cameo being a gem set in the hilt.^[2][4] He rejects Brüch's derivation from an Arabic plural meaning “buds”, a word found only in the dictionaries, and calls very doubtful a Persian name of a hard stone proposed by Fränkel.^[2] Corriente, Pereira and Vicente derive it from a Neo-Arabic word taken from a Persian stone name meaning “ship's iron”, a stone goldsmiths used to tint other stones.^[6] Pedro de Alcalá's vocabulary of Granadan Arabic has the Romance word itself, which Corominas takes as a sign that the Arabic word was not used there.^[2] Italian cammeo and Old Occitan camaieus belong to the same family.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Alfonso X's Lapidario (c. 1250, in a manuscript of the mid-13th century) describes a stone whose sharp splinters, set on rods of silver or copper, are used to drill and carve other stones o fazer camafeos “or make cameos”.^[3][7] The sense is already a figure carved in relief in a hard stone.^[7]

Semantic evolution

In royal wills and chronicles from 1284 on, cameos appear set in crowns beside other precious stones.^[3][8] Nebrija gave Latin calcitis bicolor for it.^[3][9] In 1611 Covarrubias described it as a valued stone carved with figures, white on a dark ground, used for buttons, medals and ornaments on caps, and explained the name by two Greek words meaning “work” and “dark”.^[10]

The Academy defined it in 1817 as the figure in relief on a precious stone with a dark ground, and also as the carved stone itself.^[11] Salvá in 1846 added a painters' sense, a design in a single colour, which Domínguez extended figuratively to dull, monotonous writing.^[12][13] The current DLE describes the stone itself, usually an onyx or agate, with a figure carved in relief.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – Alfonso X's Lapidario speaks of carving camafeos.^[3]
• 1284 – a royal will lists crowns with stones and camafeos.^[3][14]
• c. 1375 – Corominas's first record, in the chronicle of King Peter.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija's Spanish–Latin dictionary includes it.^[3]
• 1579 – first record from the Americas, a gold medal with a cameo in Cuzco.^[15]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the stone and its uses.^[10]
• 1846 – Salvá records the painters' sense, a design in one colour.^[12]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary first gives an etymology, through Low Latin from gemma.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cameo: a precious or semiprecious stone, usually onyx or agate, with a figure carved in relief.^[5][1][17]
2. The figure carved in relief on such a stone.^[18][17]

Related words

• gema
• French camée
• Italian cammeo

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 776
3. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. camafeo
4. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. camafeo
5. ^ a b c 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. camafeo
6. ^ Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. camafeo
7. ^ 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. camafeo
8. ^ 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. 594
9. ^ 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. camafeo
10. ^ 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. 394
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 162
12. ^ a b Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 195
13. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 319
14. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. camafeo
15. ^ 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. camafeo
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 179
17. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. camafeo
18. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. camafeo