coraza

Forms

coraza f (plural corazas)^[1]

Etymology

Corominas takes it as borrowed from Old Occitan coiraça, recorded from the 12th century, or from Old French cuirace, recorded in 1266; Catalan cuirassa is the same word.^[2] These forms continue the feminine of the adjective Latin coriācea (“made of leather”), because the oldest cuirasses were made of leather.^[2][3] Old Spanish wrote it with the voiceless ⟨ç⟩ (Juan Ruiz, Alfonso de Palencia, Pedro de Alcalá), so it cannot be a native Spanish outcome of the Latin word, as Cuervo had already observed.^[2] DICCA-XV also derives it from the Occitan word.^[4] The DLE and Wiktionary instead take it straight from Latin, Wiktionary from a Late Latin phrase meaning “leather garment”.^[5][1] Medieval Latin had the noun coriacea “cuirass”, with many spellings.^[6]

The Latin adjective is formed on corium (“skin, hide, leather”), the source of the inherited cuero.^[2][7] The same word is Portuguese couraça, Italian corazza and French cuirasse.^[8][9] The Latin noun goes back to *korjom and *(s)kor-yó-m (“cut, torn off; peeled”), from the root *(s)ker- (“to cut off, separate”).^[1] De Vaan explains it as a derivative of a noun for “what is torn or peeled off”, hence “bark, skin”.^[10]

The variant coracha, with the Mozarabic form of the suffix, named a kind of fortification from the end of the 14th century, and later a leather sack.^[3][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy) uses it for something to carry bread in: aduxo al baron de Dios pan nuevo, .xx. panes de ordio en su coraça “he brought the man of God new bread, twenty barley loaves in his coraça”.^[11][12] The royal ordinances of 1252 name the coraças de las siellas, the leather coverings of saddles.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The armour of breastplate and backplate is the sense of the word from the 14th century on: Juan Ruiz lists it in the Libro de buen amor, and Nebrija renders coraças by Latin thorax.^[2][13][4] Covarrubias in 1611 explained it as armour first made of strong leather straps knotted together, later of steel plates, and recorded tentar a uno las coraças “to test whether someone is armed”, figuratively “to put someone to the test”.^[14] The Academy's dictionary added the soldier armed with a cuirass in 1817, the armour plating of a ship in 1869 and the shell of turtles in 1884.^[15][16][17] The figurative “protection, defence” is now the second sense.^[5]

The saddle covering, obsolete in Spain, lived on in Mexico and Colombia, where it is a broad piece of leather that protects the rider's legs from the horse's sweat, and in New Mexico, as an embossed and embroidered saddle cover.^[18][19] In Colombia it is also the casing of a tyre.^[20] Hopi borrowed it as kolaasa.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (in a 13th-century copy) has coraça for a bag for loaves.^[11][12]
• 1252 – the Cortes of Alcalá de Henares name the coraças of saddles.^[11]
• 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz, Libro de buen amor, the DCECH's first record.^[2][13]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: coraças “armour of the body”, Latin thorax.^[4]
• 1543 – first record from the Americas, in Panama.^[21]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from leather straps and records tentar a uno las coraças.^[14]
• 1817 – the Academy adds coraza or caballo coraza for the cuirassier.^[15]
• 1869 – the armour plating of a ship enters the Academy's dictionary.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy derives it from cuero and adds the shell of turtles.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cuirass: body armour of iron or steel made of a breastplate (peto) and a backplate (espaldar).^[5][1]
2. (figurative) Protection, defence: La ironía era su única coraza.^[5][22][1]
3. (nautical) Armour plating of a ship (blindaje).^[5]
4. (zoology) The hard shell of turtles and tortoises, with openings for the head, legs and tail.^[5][22]
5. (obsolete, Mexico, Colombia) A leather covering over the saddletree (fuste) of a saddle.^[5][18]
6. (obsolete) A cuirassier (caballo coraza).^[5][15]
7. (Colombia) The casing of a tyre.^[20]

Word family

• acorazar
• acorazado
• coracero

Related words

• coriáceo
• cuero
• coracha
• Latin corium
• Portuguese couraça

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 274
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuero
4. ^ a b c 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. coraza
5. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. coraza
6. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. coriacea
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1890
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1019
9. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 1, 518
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ 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. coraza
12. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. coraza
13. ^ 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. 785
14. ^ 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. 511
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 240
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 210
17. ^ 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. 291
18. ^ a b Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 396
19. ^ Cobos, Rubén (1983), A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, p. 56
20. ^ 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. coraza
21. ^ 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. coraza
22. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. coraza