col

Forms

col f (plural coles)^[1] Leonese documents of 1245 have the plural colos.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin caulis (“stalk, stem; cabbage”).^[3][4][5][1] The Latin word was masculine; it became feminine in Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan and in some Sardinian dialects, a gender already recorded in the 6th century, which also produced a variant caula with a feminine ending, known from the 4th century.^[3]

The same Latin word is Catalan col, Galician col and Portuguese couve, French chou and Italian cavolo.^[6][3][7][8] Old Galician-Portuguese had both couve and col: Corominas explains them as outcomes of one word, because /au/ in hiatus was reduced to /o/ only in parts of the territory, and a plural coes was remade as coles on the model of plurals such as sales.^[3] One region then generalised the singular form and the other the plural.^[3] He rejects the idea that the Galician form was taken from Castilian, since it already occurs in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[3]

The Latin noun continues Proto-Italic *kauli- (“stalk”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)keh₂u-l-i- (“stem of a plant”), and is related to Ancient Greek καυλός (kaulós, “stem, stalk”), Lithuanian káulas (“bone”) and Old Irish cúal (“bundle of sticks”).^[9] De Vaan takes the suffix ⟨-li-⟩ for a Latin innovation and the variant cōlis for a borrowing from a rural dialect.^[9] Wiktionary instead derives the Latin word from the Greek one.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is a charter of 1219 in Oelschläger's list.^[3][4] The CDH's earliest hit is the Fuero de Alcalá (c. 1235), which fines damage to a garden per coles “for cabbages”, by each head cut.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish used the word for the garden cabbage, and Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor (1330–1335) tells of Good and Evil sharing a crop of turnips and then of cabbages.^[11][12][13] About 1495 Nebrija treats col and berza as one word, and the two have competed ever since.^[14][3] In Argentina repollo has replaced col, while in Mexico col is the usual word.^[3][15]

Proverbs with the word were collected by the dictionaries: Autoridades has entre col y col, lechuga, “some variety is needed in everything”, and the Academy's 19th-century editions add alabaos, coles, que hay nabos en la olla, said of those who boast of being preferred to worse rivals.^[12][16] Later Spanish formed names for varieties, such as col de Bruselas “Brussels sprout” and col lombarda “red cabbage”, and took coliflor from Italian dialects in 1765–1783.^[5][4]

Timeline

• 1219 – first record, in a charter.^[3][4]
• c. 1235 – the Fuero de Alcalá fines damage done per coles.^[10]
• 1245 – Leonese documents have the plural colos.^[2]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses coles of a kind of hollow cane.^[17]
• 1330–1335 – Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor has the tale of the turnips and cabbages.^[11][13]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: Col o berça, Latin caulis and brassica.^[14]
• 1525 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico City: una col e una lechuga.^[18]
• 1729 – Autoridades has the proverb entre col y col, lechuga.^[12]
• 1765–1783 – first record of the compound coliflor.^[4]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin caulis.^[19]

Meanings

Noun

1. cabbage: a garden plant of the cabbage family with broad leaves on thick stalks, of which many edible varieties are grown: Compré una col para la sopa.^[5][1]
2. col de Bruselas: Brussels sprout, a variety that grows many small heads along its stem.^[5]
3. col lombarda: red cabbage.^[5]

Related words

• coliflor
• berza
• repollo
• Latin caulis
• Portuguese couve
• English cole

Usage notes

In Old Spanish col was also a contraction of the preposition con and the article el, now obsolete.^[1] The Fuero de Usagre (1242–1275) speaks of a cleric's men and relatives que col moraren “who live with him”.^[10] The proverb entre col y col, lechuga is still used of alternating things of different kinds to avoid monotony.^[20]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. col
3. ^ 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, 131
4. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. col
5. ^ a b c d e 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. col
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 1552
7. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1020
8. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. col
9. ^ 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, p. s.v. caulis
10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. col
11. ^ a b 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. 717
12. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. col
13. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 122
14. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 314
15. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. col
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 171
17. ^ 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. col
18. ^ 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. col
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 255
20. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. col