colmillo

Forms

colmillo m (plural colmillos)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote colmiello, in the Moamín, the General estoria and Juan Ruiz.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin columellus (“canine tooth”), a Late and Vulgar Latin derivative of columella (“little column”), named for the long, rounded shape of the tooth.^[4][5][6][1] This is a diminutive of columna (“column”).^[7][1]

The Latin word is found in the 4th-century veterinary treatise of Chiron, in Isidore of Seville and in the 6th-century Lombard Dioscorides.^[4] Varro and Pliny already have the adjective in dentēs columellārēs;^[4][1] Corominas holds that the context always shows a front tooth and not a molar, while Wiktionary takes the phrase as the grinding teeth of horses.^[4][1]

Only Spanish kept the word: Portuguese colmilho is a borrowing from Spanish, and Berber has it with a changed sense, “angle of the lower jaw”.^[4][8] Catalan colomell, used only in the Maestrat, is an Aragonese or Mozarabic word.^[4] Corominas thinks the word was already popular in Roman Spain, since the agronomist Columella, born in Cádiz, seems to have been named for his protruding canines; it is one of the earliest Hispanic provincialisms of Latin.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record is the Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250, in a 15th-century copy), where warriors are compared to boars with colmillos amolados, los labros espumosos “sharpened tusks, frothing lips”.^[2] The Moamín (1250) lists the colmiellos among the weapons of hunting animals, and in Calila e Dimna (1251), Corominas's first record, an elephant wounds a lion with its tusks.^[2][4][5] The derivative colmellada “bite with a canine” is already in Berceo's Milagros.^[4]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word meant both the canine of humans and animals and the tusk of a boar or elephant.^[2][9] In 1611 Covarrubias explained that nature gave three kinds of teeth, and that the colmillos, between incisors and molars, serve to seize and tear; he derived the word from columelillos “little columns”.^[10] In 1846 Salvá recorded the tusks of the boar and elephant and the phrases mostrar los colmillos “to show one's strength” and tener colmillos “to be shrewd and hard to deceive”.^[11] The Academy recorded escupir por el colmillo “to brag” in 1869, and the elephant's tusk as a separate sense in 1899.^[12][13]

In Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica colmillo is the shrewdness that comes with experience, and in Puerto Rico the white part of a fighting cock's spur.^[14]

Timeline

• 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre compares warriors to boars with sharpened colmillos.^[2]
• 1250 – colmiellos in the Moamín.^[2]
• 1251 – Calila e Dimna: an elephant's tusks.^[4][5]
• 1280 – Alfonso X's General estoria describes boars with colmiellos a cubit long.^[9]
• 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz uses colmillo and colmiello in the Libro de buen amor.^[3][4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija translates it dens columellaris.^[15]
• 1535 – first record in the Americas, in Santo Domingo, of sea lions.^[16]
• 1604 – first record of colmilludo.^[5]
• 1611 – Covarrubias explains the three kinds of teeth.^[10]
• 1899 – the Academy adds the elephant's tusk as a separate sense.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A canine tooth: the strong pointed tooth on each side between the incisors and the first molar.^[6][1]
2. A tusk, as of an elephant: Los colmillos del elefante son de marfil.^[6][1]
3. The fang of a venomous snake.^[17][18]
4. (Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica) Shrewdness that comes from experience.^[14][18]

Word family

• colmilludo
• colmillazo

Related words

• columna
• Latin columella

Usage notes

Set phrases include enseñar los colmillos “to show one's teeth, make oneself feared”, escupir por el colmillo “to brag” and tener el colmillo retorcido “to be too experienced to be fooled”.^[6][17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 139
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. colmillo
6. ^ 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. colmillo
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. columellus
9. ^ 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. colmillo
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. 486
11. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 262
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 185
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 240
14. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. colmillo
15. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 315
16. ^ 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. colmillo
17. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. colmillo
18. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. colmillo