cayado

Forms

cayado m (plural cayados)^[1] The feminine cayada is recorded from Nebrija on, and Aragonese has gayata.^[2] Regional forms include cayata (La Rioja, Jaca), gayata (Soria) and callada (Cantabria).^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *caiatus, short for a phrase with baculus (“staff”): a staff shaped like a Late Latin caia (“club”).^[2][4][1][5] Isidore of Seville is the only author to cite the Late Latin noun, which he wrongly attributes to Horace and defines as a club or a kind of boomerang.^[2] Corominas sees it as a word of the Latin of Hispania and Africa, either pre-Roman or from Greek, as Stowasser proposed, and argues from the agreement of the Romance forms that the idea of a hook is old in it.^[2] Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Italic *kaidjā, from Proto-Indo-European *kh₂eyd- (“to cut, hew”), the root of caedō (“to cut”);^[1] Corominas notes that the evidence for a related verb meaning “to beat”, cited by Fulgentius as old, is unreliable.^[1][2]

The same word is Portuguese cajado and Galician caxato, and the Mozarabic word that gave alcayata “hooked nail” belongs with it.^[2][6] Catalan gaiato was taken from Aragonese gayato through the shepherds of the Maestrat.^[7][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are in Berceo: his Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos (c. 1230) shows the saint as a shepherd su cayado en mano, con su capa vellada “his crook in hand, with his fleece cloak”.^[8][9] His Vida de San Millán (in an 18th-century copy) has so cayado en mano a leï de pastor “his crook in hand, as a shepherd does”.^[10] The first hit in a contemporary manuscript is in the Castigos of 1293, which speaks of the cayado delapredicaçion “the crook of preaching” that restrains wickedness.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The word has always meant the shepherd's crook.^[4][8] Alonso de Palencia (1490) glossed Latin pedum as cayado de pastor encoruado en la cabeça “shepherd's crook curved at the top”.^[8] Covarrubias (1611) described it as the shepherd's staff with a hook to catch an animal by the foot, and added that old men use another kind of staff to steady themselves.^[11] Autoridades (1729) repeated the definition and Covarrubias's guesses at a Greek origin.^[12] The Academy's 1884 dictionary added the sense “bishop's crozier”.^[13] In the Americas the word is recorded from 1571, in Mexico.^[14]

Timeline

• c. 1230 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos.^[8][2]
• 1293 – the Castigos, the first record in a contemporary manuscript.^[10]
• 1490 – Alonso de Palencia glosses pedum as cayado de pastor.^[8]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives caiado o caiada.^[8]
• 1571 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico City.^[14]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the shepherd's and the old man's staff.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy adds the bishop's crozier.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A crook, a stick curved at the top, especially the one shepherds use to catch and hold their animals: El pastor se apoyaba en su cayado mientras vigilaba las ovejas.^[4][1]
2. A bishop's crozier, the báculo pastoral.^[4]

Word family

• cayada

Related words

• alcayata
• báculo
• Portuguese cajado
• Catalan gaiato

Usage notes

García de Diego records a separate Canarian cayado “pebble”, which he derives from a Celtic word for stone, as in Spanish callao.^[15] Wiktionary gives the pronunciation /kaˈʃado/ beside /kaˈʝado/.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 930
3. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1246
4. ^ 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. cayado
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 640
7. ^ 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. 4, 257
8. ^ a b c d e f 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. 657
9. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cayado
10. ^ 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. cayado
11. ^ 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. 1, 377
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 243
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 228
14. ^ 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. cayado
15. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1284