campana

Forms

campana f (plural campanas)^[1] Old Spanish texts write both campana and canpana, and sometimes campanna.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin campāna (“bell”), a shortening of vāsa campāna (“vessels from Campania”), after the region of Italy that supplied the best bronze.^[3][4][5] The adjective is campānus (“of Campania”), from the name Campānia, itself from campus (“plain”).^[6][1] Already in the first century Pliny praised Campanian bronze, and bronze was the material of both bells and steelyards, another early sense of the Latin word.^[1][7] Covarrubias and the DLE explain the name instead from Campania as the place where bells were first used;^[8][9][1] Wiktionary also mentions the view that Saint Paulinus introduced them to Christian worship there.^[8][9][1]

As the name of the bell it first appears in Latin in 515, in the Carthaginian writer Ferrandus;^[3][4][1] Wiktionary dates the first use as a bare noun to 510.^[3][4][1] The invention was Christian, and at first the word competed with nola, clocca, the source of French cloche and German Glocke, and signum.^[4]

The same word is Portuguese campa (older campãa), Catalan campana, Occitan campana and Italian campana.^[10][11][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to 1117.^[3] In the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) the bells of San Pedro de Cardeña ring out for the Cid: Tañen las campanas en San Pero a clamor.^[13][14]

Semantic evolution

In the Partidas of Alfonso X the bell is rung before mass por que lo sepa el pueblo “so that the people may know”, and the Fuero de Zorita has the court sit when the bell has rung.^[15][13] From the bell, 13th-century charters use so la campana de a church for land within its parish, a sense the Diccionario de Autoridades still gives and the DLE now marks as obsolete.^[13][16][9] The DPCAX also records canpanas in a list of church vestments in the Partidas, and the slang of germanía used the word for a skirt.^[15][17]

The shape gave its name to many things: Autoridades speaks of the hood of a chimney, and the Academy recorded the campana de buzo “diving bell” in 1817.^[16][18] Old phrases are a campana tañida or a campana herida “at the sound of the bell”, used by Cervantes.^[19][20] In Argentina the word came to name the thieves' lookout, recorded by Alemany in 1917; it is now known from Mexico to the Río de la Plata, and in Peru it also means a police informer.^[21][22][9] In the Antilles and Ecuador it names angel's trumpets and other plants with bell-shaped flowers.^[22][23] The word passed into Tagalog, Cebuano and Papiamentu as kampana.^[1]

Timeline

• 1117 – first record.^[3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid: Tañen las campanas en San Pero a clamor.^[13][14]
• 1218–1250 – the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes opens the court sessions with the bell.^[13]
• 1256–1276 – first record of campanario.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin cimbalum and tintinabulum.^[24][25]
• 1495 – first record of campanilla “uvula”.^[3]
• 1527 – first record from the Americas, in Nicaragua: tocando la canpana.^[26]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives the name from Campania.^[8]
• 1817 – the Academy records campana de buzo.^[18]
• 1917 – Alemany records the Argentine sense “thieves' lookout”.^[21]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bell: a metal instrument, usually shaped like an upturned cup, that sounds when struck by a clapper or a hammer: Las campanas de la catedral repicaron a mediodía.^[9][1]
2. Anything shaped like a bell, open and wider at the bottom, such as the hood of a chimney or a glass cloche: Tapó el queso con una campana de cristal.^[9][1]
3. (Ecuador) A red-flowered angel's trumpet (floripondio).^[9][22]
4. (obsolete) A church or parish.^[9][16]
5. (germanía) A skirt.^[9][17]
6. (masculine, Argentina, Peru and elsewhere) A thief who keeps watch outside to warn his accomplices.^[9][22]
7. (Peru) A police informer.^[9]

Word family

• campanada
• campanario
• campanear
• campanero
• campanudo
• acampanar
• campanilla

Related words

• campaña
• campo
• Late Latin campāna

Usage notes

Common phrases are echar las campanas al vuelo “to celebrate, often too early” and oír campanas y no saber dónde “to have heard something but got it wrong”.^[1][27] The campana de Gauss is the bell curve of statistics.^[9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. campana
3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. campana
4. ^ a b c d 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, 463
5. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. campana
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. campana
7. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre, p. s.v. campana
8. ^ 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. 401
9. ^ 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. campana
10. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 666
11. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. campana
12. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. campana
13. ^ 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. campana
14. ^ 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. 599
15. ^ 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. campana
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, 97
17. ^ a b Hidalgo, Juan (1609), Romances de germanía de varios autores, con el vocabulario por la orden del a.b.c. para declaración de sus términos y lengua, Barcelona: Sebastián de Cormellas (ed. Madrid 1779)
18. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 165
19. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 236
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 131
21. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 313
22. ^ 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. campana
23. ^ Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. campana
24. ^ 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. campana
25. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 309
26. ^ 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. campana
27. ^ 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, 460