cazo

Forms

cazo m (plural cazos)^[1] Old Spanish wrote it caço, with ⟨ç⟩ for the voiceless affricate.^[2][3]

Etymology

Its origin is uncertain, as the DLE and Corominas say.^[4][2][5] The word is shared by the Ibero-Romance languages, Occitan and Italian: Portuguese caço, Catalan cassa and Occitan cassa, the last two recorded in the 14th century, and Italian cazza, recorded in 1251.^[2]

The usual etymon is inherited from Late Latin cattia, with the variants cazza and cacha in Latin glosses, where it renders Latin trulla (“ladle, trowel”).^[2] Meyer-Lübke first made the identification.^[2][6] The DRAE of 2001 and Moliner give it as a possible source, and Wiktionary suggests that the masculine goes back to a Vulgar Latin neuter *cattium.^[7][8][1] García de Diego notes that Latin ⟨tti⟩ gave ⟨z⟩ here, as in pieza.^[6] In his REW Meyer-Lübke took the Late Latin word as a variant of Ancient Greek κύαθος (kúathos, “ladle, cup”), following Baist's proposal of the diminutive κυάθιον (kuáthion);^[9] Corominas finds the required change to *cathion odd, and the Catalan and Occitan forms need a Latin form with ⟨tt⟩.^[9][2]

Eguílaz derived the word from Arabic قصعة (qaṣʿa, “large bowl”), an etymology Rohlfs favoured.^[10][2] Corominas thinks it unlikely because the word reaches far into France and northern Italy, and even Serbo-Croatian, although he grants that the name of a utensil can travel.^[2] Corriente revives it: the rarity of the Late Latin word and the age of the feminine forms point to Andalusian Arabic قصعة (qáṣʕa), from the Classical word, which he glosses “bowl for ten”, and the missing Arabic article would fit a spread through Mediterranean trade.^[11][12] Corominas rejects outright the Germanic origin proposed by Diez, an Arabic word for “cup” and a derivation from Latin catīnus (“bowl”).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Latin–Spanish glossaries of about 1400 give caço in the Toledo glossary, where the Escorial glossary has cucharón “ladle”.^[3][2] A late-15th-century copy of the Gran crónica de Alfonso XI already has a Moorish woman striking a man on the head con el caço de la olla “with the ladle of the pot”.^[13][14]

Semantic evolution

Gómez Manrique's Cancionero (1445–1490) has it too, and Nebrija's Spanish–Latin vocabulary of about 1495 renders caço de hierro with Latin fuscina and creagra.^[3][14] The Diccionario de Autoridades describes a copper or brass vessel shaped like half an orange, with a long iron handle, used to boil eggs and fish, and in some places the iron ladle for drawing water from jars; it reports Covarrubias's derivation from Latin cadus and López de Velasco's from cacabus.^[15] The Academy's dictionary of 1899 adds the carpenters' glue pot, and in 1917 Alemany derived the word from Arabic.^[16][17]

Today a cazo is a saucepan or a ladle, a ladleful, an industrial pot with a handle, and colloquially a clumsy person; the sense “back of a knife” is obsolete.^[4] Spanish slang uses it for a pimp.^[18][1] In Panama it is a strainer made of half a gourd, used in sugar mills.^[19] Inventories from the Americas list copper caços from 1554.^[20]

Derivatives include cazuela (1438) and cazoleta (1604); cacerola came later, through French casserole, itself from Catalan casserola, a diminutive formed on cassa.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1348–1379 – the Gran crónica de Alfonso XI (in a copy of about 1500) has el caço de la olla.^[13]
• c. 1400 – the Toledo glossary records caço.^[2][3]
• 1438 – first record of the derivative cazuela.^[5]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija's vocabulary has caço de hierro.^[14]
• 1554 – first record in the Americas, in an inventory from Puebla.^[20]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades describes the copper vessel and the water ladle.^[15]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from Latin cadus and adds the glue pot.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. A saucepan: a kitchen pan of metal or porcelain, usually wider at the mouth than at the base, with a handle and often a spout.^[4][1]
2. A ladle: a half-sphere with a long handle for moving liquids or soft food from one vessel to another: Sirve la sopa con el cazo.^[4][1]
3. A ladleful of food: Me puso dos cazos de garbanzos.^[4]
4. A metal pot with a handle used in industry, as the carpenters' glue pot.^[4][8]
5. (colloquial) A clumsy person.^[4][1]
6. (Spain, slang) A pimp.^[18][1]
7. (obsolete) The back of a knife, opposite the edge; recazo.^[4]

Word family

• cazuela
• cazoleta

Related words

• cacerola
• recazo
• Catalan cassa
• Portuguese caço

Usage notes

Meter el cazo means “to put one's foot in it”, and poner el cazo “to hold out one's hand discreetly for a shameful payment”.^[4]

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 Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 934
3. ^ a b c d 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. 659
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. cazo
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cazo
6. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. cazo
7. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. cazo
8. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cazo
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2434
10. ^ Eguílaz y Yanguas, Leopoldo de (1886), Glosario etimológico de las palabras españolas (castellanas, catalanas, gallegas, mallorquinas, portuguesas, valencianas y bascongadas) de origen oriental, Granada: La Lealtad, p. 390
11. ^ Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. 278
12. ^ 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. cazo
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. cazo
14. ^ a b c 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. cazo
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 247
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 212
17. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 358
18. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. cazo
19. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. cazo
20. ^ 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. cazo