codo

Forms

codo m (plural codos)^[1] Old Spanish cobdo is the usual form from the 12th to the 16th century;^[2][3] Leonese had coldo and Aragonese coudo.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cobdo, inherited from Latin cubitum (“elbow; cubit”).^[2][4][5][1] The DLE, Corominas and García de Diego cite the masculine variant cubitus.^[5][2][3] The Old Spanish form lost its ⟨b⟩: Corominas finds the modern form first in Alfonso de Palencia (1490).^[2] Its learned doublet is cúbito “ulna”, recorded from 1729.^[2][1] Late Latin already used the word for that bone.^[2][1]

The same Latin word is Portuguese côvado (now only an old measure of length), Galician cóbado, Catalan colze, French coude and Romanian cot.^[3][6][7][1] Wiktionary also names the English cognate cubit.^[1]

De Vaan finds the old derivation from a root Proto-Indo-European *keu-b- weak, since the Greek, Celtic and Germanic words compared with it mean quite different things.^[8] He takes the Latin noun as a use of the past participle of cubō (“to lie down”), since people lie on their elbow when they sleep on their side and the Romans reclined at meals.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) has the word for the elbow, with blood running down the arm: por el cobdo ayuso la sangre destellando “the blood dripping down from the elbow”.^[9][2] The measure of length is almost as old: about 1200 the Fazienda de Ultra Mar gives the curtains of the tabernacle a length of 28 cobdos.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias recorded the measure as six palms, and the phrases dar del codo “to nudge someone as a secret warning” and beber de codos “to drink at leisure”, leaning on the table.^[10] Autoridades added the nautical cubit, of 33 of the 48 inches of the Castilian vara.^[11] By 1884 the Academy also gave the bend of a pipe and the joint of the foreleg in quadrupeds.^[12] The DLE adds the part of a sleeve that covers the elbow.^[5]

Idioms with codo are many: hablar por los codos “to talk nineteen to the dozen”, empinar el codo “to drink a lot”, codo con codo “side by side”.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – cobdo “elbow” in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[2][9]
• c. 1200 – cobdos as a measure of length in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar.^[9]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario places a star near the cobdo of a constellation figure.^[13]
• 1490 – the modern form codo in Alfonso de Palencia.^[2][14]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija distinguishes the codo del braço (Latin cubitus) from the measure.^[15][16]
• 1535 – the first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records dar del codo and beber de codos.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy adds the bend of a pipe.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. The elbow, the back and outer point of the joint between the arm and the forearm.^[5][1]
2. The joint of the foreleg in quadrupeds.^[5]
3. An elbow of pipe, a bent piece that changes the direction of a pipe.^[5][18]
4. A cubit, a measure of length taken from the elbow to the end of the hand.^[5][1]
5. The part of a garment that covers the elbow.^[5]
6. (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua) A stingy person (tacaño), a miser; also adjective.^[5]

Word family

• acodar
• codazo
• codear
• codillo
• recodo
• codal
• codera

Related words

• cúbito
• Latin cubitum
• English cubit

Usage notes

In Mexico, Central America and parts of South America codo is also a colloquial adjective, “stingy, tight-fisted”.^[19][1] The DLE lists it as a sense of the word for the elbow, Wiktionary derives it from codicia or codicioso under the influence of codo, and Gómez de Silva's Mexican dictionary from Latin cupidus “desirous”.^[5][1][20]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 117
3. ^ a b c d García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2003
4. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. codo
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. codo
6. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1017
7. ^ 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, 843
8. ^ 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
9. ^ 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. codo
10. ^ 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. 476
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 253
13. ^ 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. codo
14. ^ 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. 712
15. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 314
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. codo
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. cobdo
18. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. codo
19. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. codo
20. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (2001), Diccionario breve de mexicanismos, México: Academia Mexicana / Fondo de Cultura Económica, p. 61