cortina

Forms

cortina f (plural cortinas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cortina, inherited from Late Latin cortīna (“curtain”).^[2][3][1] The Late Latin noun, used by Saint Ambrose, Saint Isidore and other church writers, is a derivative of Vulgar Latin cors (“enclosure”), the classical cohors, and a calque of Ancient Greek αὐλαία (aulaía, “curtain”), itself from αὐλή (aulḗ, “courtyard, dwelling”).^[4] The link between “enclosure” and “curtain” is the idea of closing in: Coromines says the curtain went round beds and other closed spaces.^[5][6] Corominas keeps it apart from the classical Latin sense “cauldron, round space”.^[4][7]

The same word is Italian cortina, French courtine, Old Occitan cortina and Catalan cortina.^[8] Corominas thinks the Spanish word could be a learned one, as Portuguese cortina and the Béarnese form surely are; the REW instead takes the Portuguese word from Spanish.^[4][8]

The classical word meant “farmyard” and then a military unit.^[7] De Vaan and Wiktionary trace it to Proto-Italic *kom and *horti-, and De Vaan perhaps to Proto-Indo-European *ǵhr-ti- (“enclosure”); it is related to hortus (“garden”).^[7][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is in Berceo's Milagros (stanza 320), where an image of the Virgin wears de suso rica impla en logar de cortina “above, a rich wimple in place of a curtain”: here it is the veil over a holy image.^[4][9] In Berceo's Sacrificio de la misa it is the veil of the Temple, torn at the Passion.^[10][11] The Fueros de Aragón of 1247 have an oath por la cortina que estaua estendida ante cherubin “by the curtain that was spread before the cherub”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

In Juan Ruiz love non dura so cortina, “does not stay under a veil”, that is, it does not stay hidden.^[4][9] Alfonso de Palencia (1490) already has the usual sense, and Nebrija's cortina o corredor may refer to fortification.^[4] Covarrubias in 1611 says that in Castilian the word commonly means the hangings of a bed, and describes the sumiller de cortina who drew the curtain of the king's seat in the royal chapel.^[12] The Diccionario de Autoridades has the large cloth over doors, windows and beds, the canopy of the king's seat in the chapel, and in fortification the stretch of wall between two bastions.^[13] The 1884 edition of the Academy's dictionary records phrases such as dormir a cortinas verdes “to sleep in the open”.^[14] The modern dictionaries add anything that hides something, the cortina de humo “smokescreen”, and, colloquially, the dregs of wine left in glasses in a tavern.^[3]

In Judeo-Spanish it means a cover or wrapping cloth.^[4] In Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay a cortina is the metal roller shutter of a shop, in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico an awning, and in Cuba and Bolivia, jokingly, the eyelids.^[15][16] In Mexico and Cuba it is also a row of trees that shelters crops from the wind.^[17] Tagalog and other languages of the Philippines borrowed it as kortina.^[1]

Timeline

• 1118 – cortina in the sense “small enclosed plot” in a charter of Oña (see Usage notes).^[18][19]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo's Milagros, the first record of the curtain sense.^[4][2]
• 1247 – the Fueros de Aragón, the first record in a manuscript of its own time.^[10]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia has the usual sense.^[4]
• 1571 – first record in the Americas, at Puebla: bed curtains.^[20]
• 1575 – the sense in fortification, in Cuba.^[20]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the sumiller de cortina.^[12]
• 1617 – the collective cortinaje.^[2]
• 1706 – the verb encortinar.^[2]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first has the sense “enclosed plot”.^[18][14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A curtain: a cloth that usually hangs at doors and windows, as decoration or to keep out light and eyes: Descorre la cortina, que ya es de día.^[3][1]
2. Anything that covers and hides something: una cortina de humo.^[3][21]
3. (colloquial) In taverns, the dregs of wine left in glasses.^[3]
4. (military) A curtain wall, the stretch of wall between two bastions.^[3][13]
5. (Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay) A metal roller shutter that closes a shop.^[15]
6. (Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico) An awning.^[15][22]

Word family

• cortinado
• cortinaje
• encortinar
• cortinilla
• cortinón

Related words

• corte
• cortinal
• huerto

Usage notes

In the north-west and centre of Spain cortina also names a small enclosed plot of land near a village: Corominas treats it under corte, with a first record in 1118 and in Salamanca and Cespedosa de Tormes today.^[18] Lamano describes it in Salamanca as a small field walled with dry stone a little over a metre high, and Le Men records it in León also for a walled apiary.^[23][24] The Academy's 1884 dictionary gave it as Galician, a plot for vegetables and cereals.^[14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cortina
3. ^ a b c d e f 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. cortina
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 216
5. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. cortina
6. ^ 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, 980
7. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. cortina
9. ^ 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. 799
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. cortina
11. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 260
12. ^ 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. 524
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 631
14. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 300
15. ^ 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. cortina
16. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (2001), Diccionario breve de mexicanismos, México: Academia Mexicana / Fondo de Cultura Económica, p. 67
17. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 300
18. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 213
19. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cortina
20. ^ 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. cortina
21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cortina
22. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. cortina
23. ^ Lamano y Beneite, José de (1915), El dialecto vulgar salmantino, Salamanca: Tipografía Popular, p. 355
24. ^ Le Men Loyer, Janick (2002–2012), Léxico del leonés actual, 4 vols., León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro; electronic version, Universidad de León, p. s.v. cortina