ciego

Forms

ciego m (plural ciegos, feminine ciega, feminine plural ciegas)^[1] Old Spanish writes it çiego or ciego, and has the adverb aciegas.^[2] The Asturian form is ciegu, the Aragonese ziego and the Judeo-Spanish siego.^[3][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish ciego, inherited from Latin caecus (“blind; dark, hidden”).^[4][5][6][1]

The same Latin word is Portuguese cego, Galician cego, Catalan cec, Old Occitan cec, Old French cieu and Italian cieco.^[7][8][1] In Mozarabic it is recorded as Mozarabic chica (“fog”), and other Romance dialects also made words for fog and mist out of it.^[8][7] In medieval Catalan the word competed with orb, which was more common in Old Occitan.^[9]

The Latin adjective goes back to Proto-Italic *kaikos, from Proto-Indo-European *kéh₂ikos (“one-eyed”), and is related to Old Irish cáech (“one-eyed”) and Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐌹𐌷𐍃 (haihs, “one-eyed”).^[10][1] De Vaan notes that these formations in ⟨-ko-⟩ are limited to a few branches and need not be as old as the parent language, though the root probably is.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds ciego first in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140).^[4][5] The DEMel lists a record of 1132 in the cartulary of San Vicente de Oviedo, and the DTME dates the sense “without sight” to 1129.^[2][11] The sense was the Latin one from the start: Alfonso X's Partidas speak of Christ, who made the man born blind see.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The sense “dark” is already in the Libro de Alexandre.^[4] The Diccionario de Autoridades gives the literal sense, for people and animals, and a figurative one for a person who acts without reflection, and for love, hatred and envy, which cloud reason.^[12] Covarrubias in 1611 distinguishes the man born blind, who can recover his sight only by a miracle, from one who has lost it.^[13]

The Academy's dictionary of 1817 records the noun for the caecum, the first part of the large intestine, and the proverb en tierra de ciegos el tuerto es rey, “among the blind the one-eyed man is king”.^[14] The anatomical sense continues the Latin caecum intestinum, itself a calque of a Greek term; in Spanish it is recorded from the end of the 15th century.^[11] The 1843 edition also gives bread or cheese without holes and a conduit blocked with earth or rubbish.^[15] In colloquial Spain ponerse ciego is to stuff oneself with food, drink or drugs, and the noun ciego is a drinking bout or a drug high.^[6][16]

In the Americas a card player without trumps is ciego from the Río de la Plata to Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador.^[17][18] In Cuba it names a stretch of open land closed in by forest, from which places such as Ciego de Ávila take their name.^[19][20] In the Dominican Republic it is a dish that neighbours give one another.^[21][17]

Timeline

• 1129 – the DTME's first date for the sense “without sight”.^[11]
• 1132 – a record in the cartulary of San Vicente de Oviedo.^[2]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid.^[4][5]
• 1211 – the first text in the HSMS archive.^[22]
• 1220–1250 – the verb cegar, from Latin caecare, and cegajoso are first recorded.^[5]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija translates ciego del todo punto “completely blind” by Latin caecus; ceguera is first recorded.^[23][5]
• 1545 – first record from the Americas, in the Río de la Plata.^[24]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines the word.^[13]
• 1637 – cegato is first recorded.^[5]
• 1817 – the Academy records the anatomical sense “caecum”.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin caecus.^[25]

Meanings

Adjective

1. blind: without the sense of sight; also as a noun, a blind person: El ciego cruzó la calle con su perro guía.^[6][1]
2. Seized by a violent passion: ciego de ira, ciego de amor.^[6]
3. dazzled, unable to see what is plain.^[6][26]
4. Of a feeling or leaning: very strong and free of doubt, as in obediencia ciega.^[6][1]
5. Of a duct or opening: blocked or walled up: una puerta ciega.^[6]
6. Of a wall: without openings.^[6]
7. (colloquial) Stuffed with food, drink or drugs; very drunk.^[6][1]
8. (rare) Of bread or cheese: without holes.^[6]

Noun

1. A river fish of Ecuador.^[6][27]
2. (anatomy) The caecum.^[6][11]
3. (Argentina) A card player with bad cards or no trumps.^[6][17]

Word family

• ceguera
• ceguedad
• cegato
• cegajoso
• cegarra
• ciegamente
• enceguecer

Related words

• cegar
• obcecar
• cecal
• Latin caecus
• Portuguese cego

Usage notes

In Argentina and probably elsewhere in the Americas enceguecer replaces cegar, to avoid confusion with segar “to reap”.^[4] The adverbial phrase a ciegas means “blindly; without knowledge or thought”.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. ciego
3. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. ciegu
4. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 66
5. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ciego
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. ciego
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1461
8. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1230
9. ^ 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, 651
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b c d Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. ciego
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 343
13. ^ 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. 595
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 199
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 162
16. ^ León, Víctor (1980), Diccionario de argot español y lenguaje popular, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, p. s.v. ciego
17. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. ciego
18. ^ Garzón, Tobías (1910), Diccionario argentino, Barcelona: Imprenta Elzeviriana de Borrás y Mestres, p. 108
19. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 350
20. ^ Suárez, Constantino (1921), Vocabulario cubano, La Habana: Librería Cervantes / Madrid: Perlado, Páez y Compañía, p. 133
21. ^ Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. ciego
22. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. ciego
23. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 324
24. ^ 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. ciego
25. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 240
26. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ciego
27. ^ Lemos R., Gustavo (1920–1922), Semántica o ensayo de lexicografía ecuatoriana, Guayaquil, with Suplemento (1922), p. 1, 51