conejo

Forms

conejo m (plural conejos, feminine coneja, feminine plural conejas)^[1] Old Spanish wrote coneio;^[2][3][4] Aragonese charters from 1094 on have conellos and conillos, and the Asturian form is coneyu or conexu.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish conejo, inherited from Latin cuniculus (“rabbit; burrow, underground passage”).^[3][5][6][1] Martial's verse shows a long vowel in the second syllable of the Latin word, and the Romance forms except Portuguese coelho point to the same quantity, but the diminutive ending -iculus had variants with a long and a short vowel in Romance, and Spanish -ejo continues the short one.^[3]

The same word is Galician coello, Asturian coneyu, Aragonese coniello, Catalan conill, Occitan conilh, Old French conil and Italian coniglio.^[3][7][1] In Catalan it appears in Medieval Latin documents of 978 already in a Catalan form, the plural chonilibus.^[8]

Pliny and Aelian state that both the animal and its name came to Rome from Hispania, so the Latin word is pre-Roman.^[3][9] The BDELC, Gómez de Silva and the DLE agree on a pre-Roman, probably Iberian, origin, and Corominas relates it to Basque untxi (“rabbit”) of Roncal and Upper Navarre, from an old diminutive *kun-txi.^{[5][10][6][3]} He accepts Simonet's view that the same Basque diminutive gave Mozarabic conchair (“hound”).^[3] Bertoldi took the Latin suffix too to be Iberian, while Hubschmid proposed a Celtic origin;^[3] Corominas finds Bertoldi's case more convincing.^[3] Wiktionary calls the origin unknown, perhaps an Iberian or Celtiberian word with a Latin diminutive suffix.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest records are Aragonese: conellos in a Huesca charter of 1094 in the DEMel, and conello in a Huesca document of 1130, the DCECH's first record.^[2][3][5] The Castilian form coneio is first recorded in the Fuero de Madrid of 1202.^[3] Berceo writes Non fincará conejo “not a rabbit will remain” in his poem on the signs of the Last Judgement.^[11][12]

Semantic evolution

Latin cuniculus meant both the rabbit and a burrow or tunnel, and Covarrubias in 1611 quotes Varro's view that the animal was named after the tunnels it digs.^[9][13] Only the animal passed into Spanish.^[14] The Academy recorded the proverb el conejo ido, el consejo venido, said against advice that comes after the chance has passed.^[15]

In the Americas the word was applied from the 1530s to local animals that resembled rabbits, such as the guages and corís of New Granada.^[16] Modern Spanish uses it for rabbit meat, as a vulgar word for the vulva in Spain, for a bedpan bottle, and in Mexico for the flexed biceps.^[6] Regional senses include “detective” in Guatemala and a deep-sea fish in the Canaries and Puerto Rico.^[17][18][19] The feminine coneja is said disparagingly of a woman who has many children.^[6][20]

Timeline

• 1094 – conellos in a charter from Huesca.^[2]
• 1130 – conello in a Huesca document, the DCECH's first record.^[3][5]
• 1202 – the Castilian form coneio in the Fuero de Madrid.^[3]
• 1272–1275 – Alfonso X's General estoria uses the word.^[21]
• 1532 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias quotes Varro on the animal's name.^[13]
• 1739 – the derivative trasconejarse is first recorded.^[5]
• 1817 – the Academy records the proverb el conejo ido, el consejo venido.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A rabbit, a long-eared lagomorph that lives in burrows and is bred for its meat and fur.^[6][1]
2. Rabbit meat: Para cenar hay conejo con patatas.^[6]
3. (Spain, vulgar) The vulva.^[6][1]
4. (Spain, colloquial) A bottle-shaped bedpan for bedridden men.^[6][1]
5. (Mexico) The flexed biceps.^[6][19]
6. (Guatemala) A plain-clothes police detective.^[19][17]

Word family

• conejera
• trasconejarse
• conejar
• conejero
• conejito
• conejillo de Indias

Related words

• cunicultura
• Latin cuniculus
• Catalan conill
• Portuguese coelho

Usage notes

The feminine coneja is used for the doe, and colloquially and disparagingly for a woman who gives birth very often.^[6] Conejillo de Indias is the guinea pig, also in the figurative sense of a test subject.^[20][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. conejo
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 173
4. ^ a b Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. coneyu
5. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. conejo
6. ^ 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. conejo
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. cuniculus
8. ^ 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, 882
9. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. cunīculus
10. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 187
11. ^ 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. 749
12. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 247
13. ^ 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. 1, 500
14. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. conejo
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 225
16. ^ a b 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. conejo
17. ^ a b Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 253
18. ^ Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. conejo
19. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. conejo
20. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. conejo
21. ^ 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. conejo