cima

Forms

cima f (plural cimas)^[1] Old Spanish texts write çima more often than cima.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin cȳma (“young sprout of the cabbage and other plants”).^[3][4][5][1] The Latin word is from Ancient Greek κῦμα (kûma, “swelling; wave; young shoot”), whose first sense was “swelling”, as the related verb κύω (kúō, “to be pregnant”) shows.^[3][4][1] Greek also used it for the foetus and, in Theophrastus and Galen, for a young sprout.^[6] Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Indo-European *ḱewh₁- (“to swell”).^[1]

In Greek the noun is neuter, but Columella already treats the Latin word as feminine.^[3][7] Isidore of Seville explains it as the top of vegetables or trees, and Medieval Latin used it for the top of a tree or a hill: from this sense of “top of a plant” comes the modern meaning.^[3][8]

The same Latin word is Portuguese cima, Galician cima, Catalan cima, Occitan cima, French cime and Italian cima.^[9][10][1] An Old Spanish and Asturian quima (“branch”) is a variant of the same word, and the word was borrowed as Basque kima.^[3][9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Berceo, in the first half of the 13th century, uses the word only for a branch of a tree: corté todas las cimas “I cut off all the branches”.^[3][4][11] The Razón de amor (c. 1205–1250, in a 13th-century copy) has the same sense: a silver cup stands entre çimas d'un mançanar “among the branches of an apple orchard”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The phrase por cima de “above” in Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor already presupposes the general sense “top”, and Juan Ruiz uses the word for the top of a mast.^[3][4] Alfonso X's Lapidario has it for the top of a mountain, and in 1490 Alonso de Palencia glosses Latin culmen as la cima.^[13][3][11] From “top, culmination” came the sense “end”, found in Juan Ruiz and Sem Tob, which survives in the phrase dar cima a “to bring to completion”.^[3][14] In the Galician-Portuguese Cantigas the word is very frequent in phrases such as a cima “upwards” and de fond' a cima “from end to end”.^[3]

Covarrubias in 1611 defined it as the heart and highest part of a tree or plant, recognised the Greek word, and also suggested a Hebrew origin.^[15] The 1729 Autoridades gave the top of a mountain first, then the top of a tree and the end of a work.^[16][17] The Academy's 1884 and 1899 editions derived it from Latin summa;^[18][19][20] Alemany in 1917 and the later Academy dictionaries give the Latin and Greek etymon.^{[18][19][20][5]} Today it also names the cyme, an inflorescence ending in a flower, and in phonetics the vowel at the core of a syllable; in Asturian it is the top layer of a liquid.^[5][21]

Timeline

• c. 1205–1250 – the Razón de amor uses çimas for the branches of apple trees.^[12]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo uses cima for a branch of a tree.^[4][3]
• 1251 – the compound encima “above” appears in Calila e Dimna.^[3][4]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario places a stone en cima dun mont “on the top of a mountain”.^[13]
• 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz uses the word for the top of a mast and for the end of something.^[3][4]
• 1490 – Alonso de Palencia records the sense “summit” and the adjective cimero.^[4][11]
• 1611 – Covarrubias calls it the heart and highest part of a tree or plant.^[15]
• 1729 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as the highest point of mountains, hills and trees.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from Latin summa.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. The summit or highest point of a mountain or hill: Llegamos a la cima antes del mediodía.^[5][1]
2. The top of a tree.^[5][16]
3. The finishing or perfection of a work.^[5]
4. The culmination or high point of a quality, process or career.^[5][14]
5. The stalk of the cardo and of other vegetables.^[5]
6. (botany) A cyme, an inflorescence whose axis ends in a flower.^[5][1]
7. (phonetics) The syllabic vowel, the nucleus of a syllable.^[5]

Word family

• cimero
• encima
• cimar

Related words

• cimacio
• Latin cȳma
• Ancient Greek κῦμα (kûma)
• Portuguese cima
• French cime

Usage notes

Dar cima a algo means “to finish something successfully”;^[18] a la por cima “in the end” is obsolete.^[5][18][14] Usage guides of the 19th century warn against confusing cima with its homophone sima “chasm”.^[22][23] In the Canaries cima or sima is also the name of a plant, Senecio papyraceus, named after the botanical sense.^[24]

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. cima
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 76
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cima
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. cima
6. ^ 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
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
9. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2072
10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b c 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. 692
12. ^ 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. cima
13. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. cima
14. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cima
15. ^ 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. 602
16. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 349
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 350
18. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 242
19. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 225
20. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 381
21. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. cima
22. ^ Batres Jáuregui, Antonio (1892), Vicios del lenguaje y provincialismos de Guatemala, Guatemala: Encuadernación y Tipografía Nacional, p. 174
23. ^ Román, Manuel Antonio (1901–1918), Diccionario de chilenismos y de otras voces y locuciones viciosas, 5 vols., Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de San José, p. 310
24. ^ Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. cima