cimarrón

Forms

cimarrón (feminine cimarrona, masculine plural cimarrones, feminine plural cimarronas)^[1]

Etymology

It is probably formed from Spanish cima + -arrón, after the mountains to which runaway slaves and animals fled.^[2][3][4] Corominas compares cerril and cerrero, and notes that the suffix is productive in Castilian, as in zancarrón and vozarrón.^[2] Domingo F. Sarmiento placed its coining in Havana, for slaves who reached the tops of inaccessible mountains and formed colonies there.^[2] The base itself is from Latin cyma (“young shoot of the cabbage”), from Ancient Greek κῦμα (kûma, “something swollen; wave”).^[5][6]

Others have sought an indigenous source: Wiktionary also gives Taíno símaran (“wild”), from símara (“arrow”), like a stray arrow, and Rochefort took it for a Carib word in 1658.^[1][7] Friederici treats it as Old Castilian and lists those etymologies as mistaken.^[7] Corominas also rejects a link with zamarra, a sheepskin jacket, proposed by Tiscornia and Spitzer, and shows that the Chilean phrase for playing truant, ⟨hacer la cimarra⟩, is a back-formation from ⟨hacer la cimarrona⟩.^[2]

From the Spanish word came English maroon (“runaway slave”) (1666) and French marron (1667), with the first syllable lost.^[2] The English word cimarron (“bighorn sheep”) was taken from American Spanish in 1850.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is from Santo Domingo in 1532: indios llamados çimarrones que son los fugitivos “Indians called cimarrones, who are the runaways”.^[9] Corominas's first record is Fernández de Oviedo in 1535, with indio cimarrón o bravo and puercos cimarrones o salvajes “wild pigs”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The word was first used of Indians who had fled.^[9] From 1547 it also describes runaway Black slaves: se alzaron al monte como negros zimarrones “they took to the hills like runaway Blacks”.^[9] It soon applied to domestic animals gone wild, horses in Cobo's work and cattle in Lozano's history of 1745, and to wild plants beside cultivated ones.^[2] Lope de Vega used it figuratively of poets who were fugitivos del monte del Parnaso.^[2] An English text by Walter Raleigh of 1596 has Cemerones.^[10]

The Academy's dictionary of 1899 recorded it as an Americanism for the runaway slave, the feral animal and the wild plant;^[11][12] Alemany's of 1917 added the bitter mate of Argentina and the idle sailor.^[11][12] In the Río de la Plata cimarrón is still mate drunk without sugar, and in Panama a rustic home-made brandy.^[13][4] In Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela it also describes a coarse person without manners.^[13][14]

Timeline

• 1532 – first record, in Santo Domingo, of fugitive Indians.^[9]
• 1535 – Fernández de Oviedo writes of puercos cimarrones.^[2][3]
• 1547 – negros zimarrones in New Granada.^[9]
• 1596 – Raleigh's account of Guiana has the English form Cemerones.^[10]
• 1666 – the English word maroon “runaway slave” is recorded.^[2]
• 1667 – the French word marron is recorded.^[2]
• 1745 – Lozano's history of Paraguay writes of vacas cerriles o cimarronas.^[2]
• 1850 – English borrows cimarron for the bighorn sheep.^[8]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary records it as an Americanism.^[11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a domestic animal: that has fled to the country and become wild; feral: En la sierra viven burros cimarrones.^[4][1]
2. Of an animal: wild, not domesticated.^[4][13]
3. Of a plant: being the wild variety of a species that is also cultivated.^[4][1]
4. (nautical, also as a noun) Of a sailor: lazy, idle.^[4]
5. (Americas, historical, also as a noun) Of a slave: who fled to the hills to live in freedom; a maroon.^[4][15]
6. (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Uruguay) Of a person: coarse, without manners.^[13]

Noun

1. (Argentina, Uruguay) Mate drunk without sugar.^[4][13]
2. (Panama, rural) A home-made aguardiente.^[13]

Word family

• cimarronear
• cimarronada

Related words

• cima
• cerril
• English maroon
• French marron

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 76
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cimarrón
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. cimarrón
5. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cima
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter, p. 191
8. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c d e 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. cimarrón
10. ^ a b Grupo IATEXT, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, AMERLEX: corpus of americanisms in early texts on the Americas (online database), p. s.v. cimarrón
11. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 225
12. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 381
13. ^ a b c d e f Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. cimarrón
14. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 236
15. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cimarrón