cesto

Forms

cesto m (plural cestos)^[1] Old Spanish texts also write çesto.^[2][1]

Etymology

It is formed from Spanish cesta, the more general word, and named at first a basket of a different shape.^[3][4][5] Corominas notes that this masculine is unusually old and frequent.^[3] Wiktionary instead derives Old Spanish cesto directly from Latin, and calls it a doublet of the feminine.^[1]

The feminine is from Latin cista (“box, basket”);^[4][3] Corominas gives the Latin vowel as long.^[4][3] The Latin word is from Ancient Greek κίστη (kístē, “basket, chest”).^[6][1] Beekes compares it with Old Irish cess (“basket”) and an Old Welsh word for a basket, and thinks it most likely a European loanword.^[7] The Latin word is also the source of English chest and Old Norse kista.^[3][7]

The masculine form also exists in Portuguese cesto, recorded in the 13th century, and in Italian dialects.^[3][8] Old Catalan has a single cest, in Muntaner, and the Asturian cestu is a small basket with a handle.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora uses it for a basket that holds money: a crucifix declares that a debtor has hidden el cesto en qe vino el aver “the basket the money came in” under his bed.^[9][3] A sale document of 1252 names the place in the market where cestos were sold.^[9]

Semantic evolution

From the 13th century the word named large baskets for bread, fruit and other goods: a will of 1270 lists nine cestos para pan.^[9][10] Autoridades (1729) describes the cesto as made of rough, unpeeled wicker, and says that cesta and cesto were used for each other.^[11] The modern dictionaries usually make the cesto larger and taller than it is wide.^[5][12]

Autoridades already records the phrase estar hecho un cesto “be drunk or asleep” and the proverb quien hace un cesto hará ciento, said of a person who has done one bad deed.^[11] The Academy's 1817 dictionary adds ser un cesto “be a dunce”.^[13] With basketball, cesto became the basket and, in the Andean countries, the basket scored; the game itself is baloncesto.^[5][14][1] In Cuba a cesto is a rubbish bin.^[14]

Timeline

• 1220–1250 – first record, in Berceo.^[4][3]
• 1250 – the Moamín, a book of hunting birds, has a pot put under a cesto.^[9]
• 1252 – a sale document mentions the place in the market where baskets are sold.^[9]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin corbis for cesto de vendimiar “grape-harvest basket”.^[15][16]
• 1512 – first record in the Americas: a cesto of crockery in Puerto Rico.^[17]
• 1729 – Autoridades records estar hecho un cesto and quien hace un cesto hará ciento.^[11]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary adds ser un cesto “be a dunce”.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A large basket, taller than it is wide, often of wicker, strips of cane or unpeeled willow rods: un cesto lleno de manzanas.^[5][1]
2. A small, low wicker basket (tabaque).^[5]
3. (basketball) The basket, the hoop with its net; in Peru, Bolivia and Chile also a basket scored.^[5][14]
4. (Latin America) A laundry hamper.^[1]
5. (Cuba) A rubbish bin.^[14]

Word family

• baloncesto

Related words

• cesta
• Latin cista
• Portuguese cesto
• English chest

Usage notes

Cesto de los papeles is a wastepaper basket, and estar hecho un cesto (colloquial) means to be fast asleep.^[5] A separate word cesto, the ancient boxer's glove of leather straps, is borrowed from Latin caestus;^[3][12] Corominas first finds it in 1555, in Hernández de Velasco's translation of the Aeneid, and calls it purely archaeological.^[3][12] Covarrubias (1611) gives only this sense under cesto.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. cesto
3. ^ 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. 2, 58
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cesta
5. ^ 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. cesto
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b 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
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 802
9. ^ 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. cesto
10. ^ 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. 686
11. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 295
12. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cesto
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 198
14. ^ 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. cesto
15. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 324
16. ^ 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. cesto
17. ^ 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. cesto
18. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 592