casco

Forms

casco m (plural cascos)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote caxco; the Diccionario de Autoridades notes that this was the older form.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is a deverbal noun from Spanish cascar (“to crack, break”).^[4][5][6][1] cascar continues Vulgar Latin *quassicāre, formed from quassō (“to shake, shatter”) with a frequentative suffix.^[1][7] Coromines describes that Latin verb as itself a frequentative of quatiō (“to shake”).^[8]

Corominas derives all the senses from “broken piece of a pot”, which became “skull” by a common comparison, as Latin testa (“earthenware pot”) gave the word for the head in Romance, and “skull” in turn became “helmet”.^[5][4] He admits that the dates do not fit well (the helmet in 1140, the skull about 1295, the broken piece and the verb in the 15th century), and that cassis (“helmet”), a word of unknown origin, is the Latin name of the metal helmet; but he keeps the derivation from the verb, which the ending ⟨-co⟩ supports.^[4] He rejects Migliorini's derivation from a Latin form of capsa (“box”), since Spanish could not have kept its /k/.^[4] The Academy's dictionary of 1899 derived the word from the Latin name of the helmet.^[9]

The same word is Portuguese casco, in the senses “sherd”, “head” and “helmet”.^[7] From Spanish come French casque (“helmet”) (15th century), Italian casco (19th century), Catalan casc and Basque kasko.^[4][7] The French word, in the sense “cask”, gave cask, and Dutch casco and German Kasko were also borrowed.^[10][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) has it in the fight scene: el casco de somo apart ge lo echava, las moncluras del yelmo todas ge las cortava, “he knocked the casco from the top and cut through all the fittings of his helmet”.^[11] Menéndez Pidal takes it as a metal cap that strengthened the top of the helmet.^[12][2]

Semantic evolution

In the 13th century the word also named a hard covering: the rind of a pomegranate in the Moamín (1250), the shell of a crab or a lobster in Alfonso X's Lapidario and Setenario.^[11][13] The sense “skull” is recorded about 1295 in the Primera Crónica General, and in the 15th century in the Libro de los exemplos and the Corbacho.^[4][14] Nebrija has the broken piece of an earthen pot about 1495, and Covarrubias in 1611 gives the skull, the round iron cap worn against blows, and the sherds of a broken pot.^[15][16]

From the 16th century the word named a barrel or cask (Santo Domingo 1494, the Canaries 1531) and the hull of a ship (Santo Domingo 1524).^[17][18] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1729) adds the segments of fruits such as the pomegranate and the orange, a sense still current in parts of Latin America.^[3][19] By 1917 the dictionaries also had the hoof of horses and mules.^[20] In Mexico and Argentina the casco of a hacienda or an estancia is its group of central buildings, and in Spain casco urbano is the built-up centre of a town.^[21][6] Colloquially the plural cascos means the head or one's wits, as in ligero de cascos “scatterbrained”.^[6][1]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses it for a metal piece of the helmet.^[11][4]
• 1250 – the Moamín has los cascos de las milgranas, pomegranate rinds.^[11]
• c. 1280 – the first record of the derivative casquete.^[5]
• c. 1295 – the first record of the sense “skull”.^[4][5]
• 1494 – the first record from the Americas, for the cask of a barrel of wine in Santo Domingo.^[17]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses casco de vaso de barro with Latin testa.^[15][5]
• 1591 – Percyvall gives “the sherds of an earthen pot, the skull”.^[22]
• 1611 – Covarrubias explains “skull” by its likeness to a round earthen pot.^[16]
• 1899 – the Academy derives it from Latin cassis.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. The skull (cráneo).^[6]
2. A piece of a broken vessel, or of a bomb after it explodes; a shard.^[6][1]
3. The hard shell of some fruits.^[6]
4. A segment (gajo) of a fruit such as an orange.^[6][19]
5. Each of the thick layers of an onion.^[6]
6. The crown of a hat.^[6][1]
7. A helmet, a hard cover worn to protect the head; also the helmet of old armour.^[6][1]
8. The centre of a town (casco urbano, casco antiguo).^[6][1]
9. The tree of a saddle.^[6][1]
10. An empty container, such as a barrel or bottle: Devuelve los cascos de cerveza a la tienda.^[6][1]
11. (nautical, aviation) The hull of a ship or aircraft, without its rigging or engines.^[6][1]
12. (Philippines) A flat-bottomed boat with outriggers and mat sails.^[6]
13. The hoof of a horse or mule.^[6][1]
14. (colloquial, often plural) The head; one's wits or judgement.^[6]
15. (plural) headphones.^[1]

Word family

• casquete
• cascote
• casquero
• casquillo
• casquivano
• encasquetar

Related words

• cáscara
• cascar
• French casque
• English cask

Usage notes

Set phrases include ligero de cascos “scatterbrained” and romperse los cascos “to rack one's brains”.^[1][6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 103
3. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 214
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 907
5. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. casco
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r 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. casco
7. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6941
8. ^ 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, 611
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 206
10. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
11. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. casco
12. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. s.v. casco
13. ^ 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. casco
14. ^ 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. 642
15. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 312
16. ^ 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. 454
17. ^ 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. casco
18. ^ Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. casco
19. ^ 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. casco
20. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 347
21. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 224
22. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 89