cerezo

Forms

cerezo m (plural cerezos)^[1] Old Spanish cereso, the form of the earliest charters, is still found beside cerezo in Alfonso de Palencia in 1490.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cereso, inherited from Vulgar Latin ceresĕum, from Latin cerasĭum (“cherry”), from Ancient Greek κεράσιον (kerásion).^[4][5][1] Corominas lists it as a derivative of cereza, but notes that this Latin form, with the sense “cherry tree”, is found in Low Latin by about 700.^[2][6] Wiktionary calls the Vulgar Latin form probable.^[1] The fruit's name, Vulgar Latin ceresia, adapted the Greek word to Latin pronunciation, with /e/ for the inner /a/.^[2] The modern ⟨z⟩ of the names of the tree and the fruit, for older ⟨s⟩, is a common kind of distant assimilation, as in ceniza and cerveza.^[2]

Galician-Portuguese formed cerezeira for the tree, which became Galician cerdeira, recorded in Portuguese soon after 1250.^[2] The Latin cerasus (“cherry tree”) gave Italian ceraso.^[7]

The Latin tree name came from Ancient Greek κερασός (kerasós, “bird cherry”).^[8][1] Beekes notes that the cultivated cherry came from the region of Pontus, and takes the Greek word to be Anatolian or Pre-Greek.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is a document of 944 with the form cereso;^[2][6] Oelschläger's list has both cereso and cerezo in 1210.^[2][6] The charters of the monastery of Oña have ceroso in 1107 and ceresos in 1177.^[10] The sense is the fruit tree, as in the Libro de Alexandre of about 1240, known from a 15th-century copy: de çerezas maduras los çeresos cargados “the cherry trees laden with ripe cherries”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In 1275 and 1276 leases of the abbey of Oña oblige the tenants to plant six cherry trees a year.^[11] The Autoridades of 1729 retold the story that Lucullus brought the tree to Italy from Pontus.^[12] The Academy's dictionary of 1843 added cerezo silvestre as a regional name of the dogwood, and later editions gave the wood of the tree as a second sense.^[13][4]

In the Americas the Spaniards gave the name to native trees with cherry-like fruit: in Mexico by 1576 to the capulí, and later to several species of Malpighia and Cordia in the Caribbean and Colombia.^[14][15][16] The DLE gives cerezo for the malpighiaceous shrub chaparro in Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.^[4]

Timeline

• 944 – a document has the form cereso.^[2][6]
• 1107 – the charters of Oña have ceroso.^[10]
• 1210 – cereso and cerezo both appear in Oelschläger's list.^[2]
• c. 1240 – the Libro de Alexandre describes trees laden with ripe cherries.^[11]
• 1275 – a lease of Oña requires six cherry trees to be planted each year.^[11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin cerasus for the tree.^[17]
• 1541 – the first record from the Americas, in Michoacán.^[14]
• 1576 – in Mexico the Spaniards call the native capulí cerezo.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin cerasus.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. cherry tree: a fruit tree of the rose family, the rosáceas, with a smooth trunk, white flowers and the cereza as its fruit.^[4][1]
2. Its wood, light brown and used in cabinetmaking: una cómoda de cerezo.^[4][19]
3. (Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela) The shrub chaparro, of the Malpighiaceae.^[4]

Word family

• cerezal

Related words

• cereza
• Latin cerasus
• Galician cerdeira

Usage notes

Cerezo silvestre is the cornejo (dogwood), and cerezo de los hotentotes the celastro.^[4] In Colombia cerezo is the name of the tree Malpighia punicifolia.^[15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 44
3. ^ 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. 679
4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. cerezo
5. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. cerezo
6. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cereza
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cerezo
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. cerezo
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 283
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 159
14. ^ a b c 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. cerezo
15. ^ 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. cerezo
16. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 348
17. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 324
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 236
19. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. cerezo