crespo

Forms

crespo (feminine crespa, masculine plural crespos, feminine plural crespas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin crispus (“curly, wavy”).^[2][3][4][1] The same Latin word is Portuguese crespo, Catalan cresp, Occitan cresp, Old French crespe and Italian crespo.^[5][2] In French it survives today mainly in derivatives such as crêpe and crêper.^[6][7]

García de Diego derived a Galician crecho (“curly”) from the Latin diminutive crispulus, but Corominas rejects this: the Galician word comes from one 19th-century dictionary and is really a form of crencha, so that the diminutive has left no Romance descendant.^[2]

The Latin adjective goes back to Proto-Italic *krispos (“curly, crumpled”), and de Vaan connects it with crīnis (“hair”) and crista (“crest”) through an Italo-Celtic *kris-po-;^[8][1] Welsh and Breton have related words for “curly, wrinkled”.^[8][1] Wiktionary mentions a tentative further link with Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to turn, bend”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word first appears as a nickname: the Cantar de mio Cid (verse 3112) names a Crespo de Grañón, and documents use it in this way as early as 1115.^[2][9] As an ordinary adjective it is found in Alfonso X's Judizios de las estrellas (1254), in its description of the figure of Saturn, and in his Lapidario, where a preparation applied to the head uncurls hair that is crespos “curly”.^[10][11]

Semantic evolution

Corominas found no use as a common adjective before Nebrija, the Celestina and Alfonso de Palencia's 1490 dictionary, and notes that Palencia still used it in the Latin sense of hair hanging in ringlets.^[2] In Spain the word came to mean hair curled naturally in very small, tight rings; in Argentina the older sense of “wavy, curly” has survived.^[2][7] Covarrubias in 1611 applied it to hair and also to wrinkled leaves of plants.^[12]

The Diccionario de Autoridades added two figurative senses: an elevated, high-flown style, with a quotation from Lope de Vega, and “angry, irritated”.^[13] By 1817 the Academy defined the style sense as artificial and obscure, which the DLE still gives.^[14][4] In much of Latin America the noun crespo means “a curl, ringlet”, and the adjective describes a person with curly hair.^[15]

Timeline

• 1115 – used as a nickname in a document.^[2][3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid names el Crespo de Grañón.^[2][9]
• 1254 – Alfonso X's Judizios de las estrellas uses the adjective of a person.^[10][11]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia uses it for hair falling in ringlets.^[2][9]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija records the derivative encrespar.^[3]
• 1519 – Fernández de Enciso describes the people from Sierra Leone onwards as negra y crespa.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias applies it to hair and to crinkled leaves.^[12]
• 1729 – the Diccionario de Autoridades adds the senses “elevated (style)” and “angry”.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin crispus.^[17]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of hair: naturally curly, growing in tight ringlets: Su hija tiene el pelo crespo y negro.^[4][18][1]
2. (botany) Of leaves: crinkled or curled.^[4][19]
3. (figurative) Of style: artificial, obscure and hard to follow.^[4][18]
4. (figurative) Irritated, angry.^[4][18]

Noun

1. A curl of hair, a rizo.^[4][18][1]
2. (feminine, obsolete) crespa: a mane or head of hair.^[4][2]

Word family

• crespilla
• crespón
• encrespar
• encrespado

Related words

• crispar
• Latin crispus
• Portuguese crespo
• Catalan cresp

Usage notes

In the Andes the phrase dejar con los crespos hechos means to stand someone up, literally “to leave them with their curls done”.^[15] In Cuba the noun is the usual word for a ringlet that is elsewhere called tirabuzón.^[20]

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 g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 240
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. crespo
4. ^ 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. crespo
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2329
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. crêpe
7. ^ a b 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, 1042
8. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b c 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. 811
10. ^ 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. crespo
11. ^ a b 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
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. 1, 530
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 655
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 252
15. ^ 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. crespo
16. ^ Grupo IATEXT, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, AMERLEX: corpus of americanisms in early texts on the Americas (online database)
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 305
18. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. crespo
19. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. crespo
20. ^ Suárez, Constantino (1921), Vocabulario cubano, La Habana: Librería Cervantes / Madrid: Perlado, Páez y Compañía, p. 157