colador

Forms

colador m (plural coladores)^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Spanish colar + -dor, from the verb meaning “to strain, filter”.^[1][2][3] colar is from Latin cōlāre (“to strain”), itself from cōlum (“strainer, sieve”).^[4][3][5] The same formation is Portuguese coador, from the Portuguese verb coar.^[1][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's first records are in 15th-century medical translations: in the Arte complida de cirugía, a version of Lanfranco's surgery dated before 1450 (the HSMS dates its manuscript c. 1451–1500), a swallow's nest is boiled in water and strained con colador rralo “through a loose-meshed strainer”.^[7][8] The Tratado de las fiebres of Isaac Israeli compares the clearing of urine to a strainer that keeps back the lees of wine.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Corominas dates the word only from 1604.^[3] In 1726 the Diccionario de Autoridades defined it as the cloth or sieve through which a liquid is strained, and also recorded the printers' tub with a perforated bottom, filled with ash, through which water ran to make lye.^[9] The Academy later sent the kitchen sense to coladero, while today's dictionaries describe a kitchen utensil of cloth, wire mesh or a perforated plate, usually with a handle.^[10][11][12] In Cuba it names the bronze mesh that filters cane juice in sugar mills.^[13] The phrase dejar como un colador “to riddle with bullets” is recorded in slang.^[14]

Timeline

• c. 1450 – first record, in a Castilian version of Lanfranco's surgery.^[7]
• 1495 – Nebrija's Spanish–Latin vocabulary has colador de paños.^[7]
• 1604 – the first record Corominas gives.^[3]
• 1625 – first record in the Americas, for pieces of raw linen in which dye was collected.^[15]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the kitchen and the printers' senses.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. A strainer or colander: a utensil of cloth, wire mesh or a perforated plate used to separate liquids from solids: Pasó el caldo por el colador antes de servirlo.^[2][1][11]
2. (printing, historical) A tub with holes in its bottom, filled with ash, through which water was poured to make lye (lejía).^[2][11]
3. (Cuba) In the sugar industry, a bronze mesh that filters the cane juice from the mills.^[13]

Related words

• coladero
• colar
• colada
• Portuguese coador

Usage notes

The DLE has a separate colador of the same spelling, numbered first: the cleric who confers an ecclesiastical benefice (beneficio), from the other verb colar “to confer canonically”, which goes back to Late Latin collare and Latin collātum “conferred”.^[2][5] The Diccionario de Autoridades already recorded it with a quotation from Navarro's Manual.^[9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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. colador
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. colar
4. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 134
5. ^ a b 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. colar
6. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva
7. ^ 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
8. ^ 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
9. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 405
10. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández
11. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos
12. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial
13. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer
14. ^ León, Víctor (1980), Diccionario de argot español y lenguaje popular, Madrid: Alianza Editorial
15. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies